


A Quieter Place

by Hollowgayle



Category: The Tunnels Series - Roderick Gordon & Brian Williams
Genre: Drama, F/M, Family Drama, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Slow Burn (In every way), Suicide Attempt, healing fic, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hollowgayle/pseuds/Hollowgayle
Summary: Dominion goes up in smoke, and with it, the last trace of anything they have ever known. And so their war ends, and there is peace in the Garden of the Second Sun; But peace is relative. What really comes after war?A/N: This is an AU exploring a universe without New Germania or any further Styx incursion into the Garden of the Second Sun. Dominion is destroyed, Will, Elliot, and the twins are stranded in the garden- All that’s left is to try to heal.





	1. Part One: Small

**Author's Note:**

> This will be updated irregularly, as I’m primarily writing it for myself. I have a lot to unpack regarding the Tunnels series, on a personal level- If you recognize me after all these years, then… Hello! I’m who you think I am! I have several chapters of this already written, and intended to publish it when it was truly finished - But some part of me was convinced that every day that went by, I was losing chances to reconnect with fans of this wonderful series who may be losing interest as time ticked on. _Carpe Diem_ I suppose! Enjoy.

She had learned to sew for the boy who made the bullet wound she’s stitching.

Rebecca Two has always known well that it’s a miracle the pair of them have survived this long at all, but there is something far more palpable about the thought when the blood that makes her fingers slippery belongs to her sister. Her hands don’t shake, and her breathing is steady, deeply black irises fixated intently on their women’s work; The needle is not much more than sharpened fish bone, pulling and tugging flesh behind it with every stitch of the thread she had picked out of her Limiter fatigues. There is nothing neat about this, like her cross stitching at home. There is nothing relaxing. Rebecca One has been unconscious for a while now. Sometimes she’ll stir and mutter something, something vicious, something angry - And other times she’ll just watch her sister with faintly hazy eyes, the wet heat of the jungle leaving her gasping like a fish as she squirms against any treatment offered.

At least she is well enough to struggle, and that is a relief. But right now, Rebecca Two is glad for her compliance. Only a few more stitches. Her work is almost trance-like.

Beneath her, Rebecca One twitches, and her sister coos gently, gaze flicking up to her drawn, uncomfortable face; A few comforting, clicking noises deep in her throat that slip past her lips, like a whisper to a sleeping baby. Deeply inhuman. And yet not. If this where they will waste away, why should she ever speak _their_ tongue again? It is not the first time in the day that she has sworn a bloody fate for Will and his ilk, for Topsoilers.

As she finishes stitching, the conscious twin feels her sister’s fingers twitch and bunch in the fabric of her shirt, grasping. She swallows, throat like sandpaper for far more than thirst, and there is a moment’s hesitation before she dips down to press her forehead to the other girl’s, muttering a few more unintelligible, soft sounds and lingering with closed eyes.

She feels exhaustion and sleep in turn creep as she sits bowed over the other, and so she sits up with a sharp breath out, and sets to bandaging the wound. Her sister’s face is only shades better than a sheet, save the dark circles around her eyes - But the bleeding has stopped at least. Not for the last time, she thanks every star she knows for Will’s pathetic nature, for the non-vital place he had shot her sister. He can’t even pull the trigger right.

She would love to watch him put the barrel beneath his chin and try again, she thinks, with a mirthful smirk. Not even he could miss then.

There is a brief moment more spent lingering, the pair sizing each other up. Rebecca One is coming to, properly; Her sister stands up and looks down at the wounded girl.

“You stay here. I’m going to find us something to eat,” she states at last, matter of fact, seeming to care little that she is unarmed and more lost than a Coprolite at sea.  Rebecca Two simply nods, awake enough now to shimmy herself into sitting up properly with her back against a tree, and wets her lips with a dry tongue.

There is more silence.

“...No. Water first,” the uninjured twin says after a moment, as though agreeing with some unspoken suggestion, and turns to set her eyes on the jungle before them. As vast and uninviting as the Rookeries in the dead of night, her brows furrow and her jaw clenches at the thought of it. Of leaving her sister here. Apart, the both of them, and so very, very small.

She is _loathe_ to feel small.

And so, as she sets off, she swears blood on Will once more. It is not the first time today. And it will not be the last.

 

* * *

 

Damn them.

Damn them for being perfect at everything they touched. Of course her aim was flawless, of course he was only alive because he put a _bullet_ in her and staggered her on the follow through. Of course. Damn the Styx. Damn the twins for following him, damn them for pushing him to this, and damn them for being dead -

They are dead.

“Shit!” Will’s voice breaks on a cry of pain and surprise as Elliot yanks the scythe out of his shoulder, and as he gives her a smarting look, the corners of her lips twitch up in a hint of a smile.

“It had to come out eventually.”

He knows she’s right, but the sight of the blood weeping from his shoulder openly now is enough to make him feel faint. Blood is different, when it’s his. So is pain. Elliot compresses his shoulder with a bandage and he snarls, for a moment sounding more animal than human as he recoils from the touch. “Bitch!”

“Watch it,” Elliot warns, looking up from her work sternly, and Will looks sheepish.

“Not you,” he says, before falling silent.

They sit that way a while, in silence. When Elliot is finished bandaging his wound, Will’s eyes fall to the scythe beside him, blood drying to a thin brown dust. There is a change in the air of the campsite; His father had toddled off somewhere, and the pair is alone for the first time since they had set out that morning. Alone and _conscious_. It is a small distinction, but an important one.

“You’re sure we got them?”

“Yes. Only an amateur could have tried something like that and gotten away with it,” Elliot replies, and to Will’s estimate, still sounding testy. For a different reason, now, but he has come a long way since those oblivious days on the Great Plane.

He has, for one small example, learned to listen.

For the most part.

“You’re upset with me,” he says, his tone taking on a weak and tired sound. Bitter almost, but exasperated above all as Elliot wipes the blood from his shoulder and neck away with a damp cloth. “Fantastic. I always do this, I don’t know what to do, or to say, and then I-“

“Just shut up, Will.”

She helps him to his feet, lifting his chin with a fingertip to check for any blood she had missed. He feels his heart skip and his face burn, but does as he’s told, well aware the blush is probably indistinguishable from the hundred shades of sunburn he is sporting.

“What you did was stupid,” Elliot says, looking down at him before removing the gentle touch of her finger and letting him have his chin back.

He lowers it, rubbing it thoughtfully and feeling the tips of his ears burn as he looks away. He goes to speak in his own defense, or perhaps to apologize (he isn’t sure which) but she cuts him off, leaving his mouth open like a gulping fish.

“Stupid and incredibly, _fantastically_ brave. And we got these.”

She lifts all that remains of a pair of thin, clear vials. Streaked with blood and dirt, the sight of them floods him with relief. One stopper black, the other white, but both cracked- Their contents left to the inferno in their wake. Thank god. Or thank Elliot, perhaps- She had _saved_ him. She had put a bullet in the Limiter behind him with little more than a yard left to spare, she had carried his unconscious body here, she had dressed his wounds, and by the smell of it, she had prepared them dinner.

“So you’re not mad at me?” It’s all he manages to fumble out. It feels so very lacking, and he clamps shut his jaw.

“No,” comes her reply as she pockets the vials, brushing a lock of his wild, dirt streaked hair out of his face with little ceremony. “How could I be?”

He goes to reply once more, but as she kisses him on the cheek, the words die.

Will feels so very, very small. And he is grateful for it. As Elliot brushes past him to busy herself, his gaze drifts back to the scythe, all that is left of his sister.

 _Sisters_ , he reminds himself, and feels oddly hollow.

 

All that is left.


	2. Part Two: Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts of this story assume a foundation-level knowledge of the books and their contents, with regard to large monuments or character moments handled off-screen for the sake of brevity. I don't care to rewrite entire chapters of the books for the sake of clarity, though I'd like to think I've kept things relatively easy to understand for the uninformed reader; This next chapter is when things begin to properly diverge from the book's plot anyway, so nods to entire scenes from the books will become scarce moving forward.

The world metes blessings to those who are righteous and just in fair moderation. It’s what their father would tell them.

The Rebecca twin knows better than to let out a victorious cry as she hears the sound of water, though it is her first instinct. Clear, _running_ water. She swallows back her dry tongue and drops to her knees to splash a handful on her face, _basking_ in the feeling of water that isn’t humidity condensing on her skin. It’s making her short of breath, the kind of excitement that winds.

She had only been walking an hour or two, and now this.

Food for the starving.

Air for the drowned.

Father had been right; Blessings indeed. But she finds she can’t linger on the thought of him for too long without a white-hot rage bubbling under her skin, the same kind of simmering heat that burns and roils when she remembers she will need to help her sister reach this place. That her twin has been _shot_.

Will.

With a single bullet, he has managed to touch every fond memory of her life that she had left. He is creeping, and insidious, and as she returns to the stream with dark storm clouds painting the illusion of dusk and her sister in tow, the bitterness swells. Not even the relief of seeing some of the color returning to her twin’s face can quell it. There is nothing Will hasn’t touched now.

Her half-life in Highfield.

Quiet moments with her sister, at home in the Citadel, and loud ones, too.

Their father.

Every book spine she runs her fingers over in the corners of her mind ends either bitter or dead or both. The storm clouds break, and she hardly processes as Rebecca One gapes her mouth again and again where she sits propped up against a tree, a delirious little smile curling her lips. Catching raindrops.

Where _is_ her sister right now? Is it the same for her?

“I’m going to kill him with my bare hands,” Rebecca Two tests, and Rebecca One stops her pursuit of the rain.

“M’take back my _th_ ythe. Bleed him dry like a pig,” the wounded girl replies, fumbling her words and staring back at her sister with a bizarre, almost hollow gaze. So focused that it isn’t really there. Rebecca Two pauses. Nods.

At least _some_ of her is there.

“Good,” she says succinctly, breaking the eye contact and glancing about. She needs something to catch rainwater. “And stop lisping. You sound _ridiculous_.”

“Fuck off.”

At least her sister has that much right. The unwounded twin crinkles her nose at the foul language and waves her sister’s remark off with a waft of her hand. “I’ll be back.”

No response. Unconscious again.

Rebecca Two sets off once more.

 

* * *

 

They decide not to tell Doctor Burrows. Will isn’t even sure what he would say, to know that his son and his friend had systematically gunned down and burned a pair of thirteen-year-old girls. Girls that had been his sisters, once. Played the role, at least. He feels nauseous if he thinks about it for too long, despite the peace the knowledge that it is _over_ brings.

So the bloody scythe is buried with the cracked and empty Dominion vials, their contents burned up with the girls that had warded over them. And they decide not to tell Doctor Burrows. There is crowing and hemming and hawing regardless.

“Will! What happened to your arm?”

The sound of his voice is loud enough for Elliot to hear on the other side of the spring, where she’s cutting and cleaning tonight’s meal. Some sort of prehistoric deer like creature, Will had told her. But her friend has been dragged off now, occupied by warding off the questions of his father. The man reminds Elliot of one of the large, buzzing insects that starts to circle Will when he has been in the heat too long. When he smells like sweat, and drips with it, too.

She watches Will laugh, and wince in a way that is too real, and too deep, to come from any pain from the healing wound, and narrows her eyes. He brushes off his father’s questions easily, and when she finds him later downstream, he is so deeply focused that the clearing of her throat nearly makes him jump out of his sunburnt skin. It’s a beautiful place. Her eyes are drawn to the cairns and crosses he’s erected for his family, though they drift towards what she’s really looking for. It seems odd to her, that he felt the vials deserved a grave.

Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps it was the bloody scythe that rests with them.

“I didn’t know you’d done all this,” she decides on after a moment, and when he doesn’t show any sign that he’s uncomfortable with her presence, she draws closer. Sitting down beside him in the tall grass, dark and furrowed brows knit together as eyes rake over the crosses. “It’s… Nice.”

Cal. Tam. Sarah.

She had barely known the people, even Cal. Not the way Will had.

He grunts in acknowledgement and draws his knees to his chest. His wound is healing, but slowly. His arm is still stiff, and it shows in the ginger way he treats it. It’s only been a few days. A few days is too short a time to heal. She imagines the monuments help in a way that bandages don’t, but her eyes always drift back to the three little stones on the other side of the stream. She had known the twins more than she had known Will’s family. She had hated them more, too.

It takes her days to summon the words, to find them within herself; A wound aching for closure. Something festering in both of them, while the rest of the world seemed to heal. She talks about everything else first- Her father, her mother. The Colony, and the Styx. Doctor Burrows is still none the wiser.

“Do you feel guilty about what we did to the twins?” A pause, and she swallows, eyes drifting back to the stones. “Does it trouble you when you think about it?”

The question feels like a shovel to the back of the head. Will reels for a moment, the words leaving him dizzy and seeing stars. “Yes,” he says after a moment, blinking askance over at her and swallowing hard as well. “I’m sure it was the right thing, and we had to. But I think about…”

What does he think about, when he closes his eyes? Does he think about watching one of the Rebeccas practice her ballet outside in the backyard, because there hadn’t been enough space inside? Does he think about the countless meals she prepared, and how she would set out his clothes? Does he think about the twisted mask of rage her face had contorted into a moment before he had pulled the trigger, watched her crumple to the ground like crushed paper? He can’t remember if he heard her scream. Blood had been rushing too hot and hard in his ears.

“...I think about a lot of things,” he says at last, and he does. “It doesn’t exactly leave you, does it? Doing something like that.”

“No,” Elliot agrees, fidgeting with a stone in her hands. “I don’t suppose it does. I’ve done a lot of it, but it’s different when you…”

When you what? Know the person on the other side of the barrel? Had she really? No. Of course not. But Elliot thinks about a lot of things too. She thinks about slipping in and out of consciousness, one of the Rebeccas doting over her night and day in the depths of the earth. She thinks about warm broth and medicine and gentle, calloused hands helping her wash when she was too weak, too rough for someone so young. She thinks about it, and knows that none of it had meant anything at all. A ruse. But a caring one. One that had saved her life.

“...I don’t know what. When things don’t go according to plan, I guess. It was… Bloodier than I thought it was going to be,” she admits. “I didn’t expect the Limiter.”

Will starts, and looks at her. “Can I ask you something?” he inquires suddenly, and it is Elliot’s turn to look askance. She wets dry lips with her tongue as she glances to him and nods, before her eyes drift back over to the cairns. “That was a Limiter you shot. Just like your dad.”

Elliot tugs another stone from the dirt, weighing it against the other absently as though wondering which is heavier. “Sure was,” she replies, before tossing one back into the stream. Nearby, Bartleby startles, abandoning his pursuit of a butterfly and darting to the edge of the water as though he had missed some new excitement. Perhaps a fish leaping, or a big bug. Will watches him stand there, at the edge. Stupid cat. He loves him more than anything, he thinks.

“So what if it was your dad?” He manages after a moment. “Do you think you still could have shot him? Just like that?”

“I never thought about it,” Elliot replies, the words quick and stiff enough to speak volumes to their untruthfulness. Of course she has. How couldn’t she? And how many Limiters has she put bullets into? “My father is dead. It’s not like it matters.”

He knows better than to press, but now he knows it matters, too. Because the twins are dead, and every time he tries to sleep, it matters more than anything.

“Alright.”

 

They sit in silence.


	3. Part Three: Keepers

It turns out that Styx genetics have very little to offer in the way of recovering from bullet wounds in the long term.

The wound closes as swiftly as either of the twins would expect, and with the help of a cane Rebecca Two finds for her, Rebecca One is back on her feet rather swiftly. But her quick healing does nothing to ease the pain, and it is still her sister that is carrying most of the weight. Building shelter. Hunting. Cooking. Treading patrol lines around their humble campsite that the wounded girl is sure are well beaten by now, but which she has never seen herself.

It’s driving her mad.

“I can’t _sit_ here anymore!”

The outburst comes over dinner one night in the midst of dead silence, startling her sister out of her skin as the pair pick away at crudely roasted animals that look something like squirrels. Gathered around their small fire, Rebecca Two shoots her sister a resentful look across the way. “Could you be any louder? You startled me.” Obviously. The pair stare at each other for a moment in silence before Rebecca Two gives. “Fine. I’m getting sick of doing all the work around here anyway. What do you want to do?”

Her words are hemmed with a quiet kind of nerves that neither of them will address. Her dark, almost red-black gaze flicks down to the bandage she knows lays beneath her sister’s shirt. There are no nights here, so it is a struggle to know how much time has passed, exactly, but she has been doting, so carefully devoted to her sister’s health that it would make any of their kind sick. She had almost given her life to save her twin’s. The loss of both of them as opposed to one would have been unacceptable, but she had taken the risk anyway.

“I want to walk patrol with you.”

And yet every time her conviction wavers, any time Rebecca One tests, or prods at the limits of her kindness, she can only remember the caves. The memory of the raw, visceral panic when she had realized her sister was not breathing is always accompanied by a shakiness in her limbs that she struggles to explain away, and so she ignores, instead.

“Alright,” she says at last, and sucks the last of the meat off a bone before setting it aside in the neat pile of them she’s amassing. She fixes her twin with a stern gaze. “But you have to start slow. You can walk half my route with me, and then I want you to come back here. It isn’t smart to leave the camp unattended.”

It is Rebecca One’s turn to scowl.

“That’s not true. You just don’t think I can do it. You don’t think I can walk the whole route,” she challenges, squinting as she finishes her squirrel-like creature. Her appetite has been voracious as she heals, and she fixes her sister with a rather sharp gaze. “You’re getting soft.”

Now that is an accusation she cannot abide.

Rebecca Two’s brows twitch, and she rolls her eyes before narrowing them as well. “Fine,” she says venomously, rising to her feet. “See if I care when I wake you at…” At what? There is no dawn. There isn’t even a dusk. “Just see if I care. I’m not carrying your carcass back to camp when you pass out from exhaustion. Lump.”

“Nag,” her sister replies equally sharply, rising to her feet with the help of her walking stick.

There is silence. And then the tension dissipates, and Rebecca Two huffs, waving her sister off towards their shelter with a waft of her hand. There is a silent agreement that she will take first watch today, keep careful vigil over their safe haven, and her twin.

She always has.

 

* * *

 

It’s no coincidence that he waits until Elliot is out hunting to approach his father.

“I want to get back to helping you,” he starts out by saying, and squares himself up as best he can. White hair a dusty mess from time spent chasing Bartleby around in a futile attempt to reclaim the dregs of his own breakfast from the thieving Hunter, he has only wiped his face clean, and very little else. He is the picture of his own youth in Highfield.

Doctor Burrows frowns at him, and he feels his heart drop.

“I think I’m well enough. Seriously, dad. And I’m going to go crazy holed up here.” A plea has started to slip into his words as he lifts his arms slightly as though to evidence his health. “My shoulder doesn’t even hurt anymore unless I mess with it. And I miss…”

Miss what? Doctor Burrows? He certainly doesn’t spend much time in camp, even with regard to his son’s injury. An animal bite, it had been explained away as. The stiffness, the discomfort, the slow healing- He had been present for almost none of it. But Will cannot find it within himself to be bitter. Of course his father is busy. They are living in a geologist’s fever dream.

“...I miss working with you.”

It isn’t the strongest finish, but he stands there unapologetic, taking none of it back and furrowing his brows. His father studies him a few moments longer before he starts to nod to himself, and Will feels his shoulders slouch in relief, doing the best he can to ignore the pang of discomfort as a result, reaching up to rub at the mostly healed injury with a grimace.

“Alright, Will,” Doctor Burrows says, taking a few steps back towards his son. Will can tell there is some kind of stern dad-lecture inbound, which he has never found his father particularly effective at. Perhaps it is because he’s so irresponsible himself. His father hands off one of his heavier bags, and Will for a moment buckles under the weight. Unable to sling it over his shoulders, he remains awkwardly holding it in both hands, peering out at his father from over its top.

Doctor Burrows is still rambling with his back turned as he continues to look over his own provisions. Will has missed most of it.

“...and if you start to flag behind, I’m sending you back to camp. Your health is just as important as our work, and I have no doubt Elliot will be none too pleased if-”

“Elliot will be none too pleased if _what?_ ”

Will’s heart drops, and he almost drops the bag as he turns, placing too much of its weight on his bad arm and grimacing. There she is. The inevitable. Someone who cares too much to let him hurt himself, though he’d rather hurt himself than be holed up here for a moment longer.

“I’m going to work with Dad,” he says, trying to sound firm, and Elliot’s brows twitch together and down. Her lips purse at Will, peering at her over the rim of his bag and struggling with its weight. He lifts both brows, a quiet plea.

“Put that down,” she says far firmer, after letting him sweat for a moment. He does so gladly; he had been hoping for the excuse. “Can we please talk about this privately, Will?”

Doctor Burrows looks baffled and out of place. Uncomfortable. He mutters something about double checking his supplies before making himself scarce, never one for confrontation; Elliot intimidates him far more than any of the other characters he’s been party to meeting on this little adventure of theirs, and Will nods reluctantly, watching his father go.

“You know he doesn’t care about your health? He just wants his digging partner back,” Elliot says, the moment he is gone, and means it. A hand lifts to pinch the bridge of her nose, and Will feels something well up in him that he can’t quite justify. She is right, of course. He sputters anyway, cowed to hear it put so bluntly.

“But I want to. And you’re not my mother. You’re not even my girlfriend,” he settles on at last, defensive, and one of Elliot’s brows shoots so far above her hairline Will thinks it must have disappeared. He feels his face burn.

“I don’t need to be your girlfriend,” she says, and crosses her arms. “I just think… As a _friend_ , it might be better for you to rest just a little while longer. He’ll have you out there digging holes and lugging rocks around. You don’t want to open that up again, do you?”

She gestures of course to his shoulder, which he presses a hand over defensively, as though to shield it from her pointing. “I know! I just… Won’t do any of that. I’m not an idiot.” There is a long pause as he peers at her, jaw set in what he hopes is a manly scowl. It is more of an indignant pout; She won’t be the one to tell him. After a moment, averting his gaze, “And of course I don’t want to open it up again. It’s… Healing well. Thanks for that.”

Elliot grunts in acknowledgement, taking a page out of his book as she nods. His thanks is appreciated, and scarce, though she knows it’s not for lack of gratitude. It’s the last it takes to convince her, and she relents, lifting her hands to shoulder level. “Fine,” the Renegade says at last, shaking her head some. “Fine. Go. Just… Be careful. No heavy lifting. I’m not treating that again.”

Will beams to have her approval, to know that she won’t be cross when he returns to camp, and in that moment he looks so very much like Cal she feels as though someone has struck her in the chest. She blinks, and the momentary apparition is gone. Will is off, calling out some promise of not hurting himself as he darts off after his father.

He’s still nursing his wound, whether he realizes it or not. She sees it in the change to his gait, the way his arms move at his sides as he runs. She clenches her fist until short nails dig into her palm, before she shakes her head, peering back over their camp. Their safe haven.

 

It’s starting to look like a home.


	4. Part Four: Recovery

Patrol is a droll affair, but it has always helped her think. One foot in front of the other, again and again, a steady rhythm in her mind that functions about the same as pacing her quarters in the Citadel when she is stressed or overthinking for the sake of it.

Right now, she’s doing both.

It's been a month of steadily increasing her patrol radius with no sign of Will or Elliot. She has half a mind to wonder if the idiot and the half-breed bitch had managed to blow themselves up alongside Dominion. Rebecca One’s slower, less steady footsteps pace along behind her - The uninjured twin won't slow herself to match her sister. It wouldn’t be fitting, and it would help neither of them.

Rebecca One must think the same, because she’s yet to complain, and always the first to do so.

“Do you think they’re dead?”

It comes after an hour or so of companionable silence between the pair, Rebecca One lagging behind with her walking stick, though she is relying on it less and less of late. There is still lancing pain in her side now and again that leaves her leaning on the stick like a lifeline, so she will not leave it behind.

“I should hope so. Good riddance,” Rebecca Two replies, and their conversation is almost indistinguishable from the cacophony of insects in the jungle. They haven’t spoken in the common tongue since the incident- And they have no desire to, anyway. What a waste of breath. “But we can’t afford to lower our guard.”

“I saw Will go down. I put my scythe in him. Don’t know where.” The twin’s voice becomes strained as she feels something grind in her side, and she leans heavily on the stick, gritting her teeth and pressing on with a more pronounced limp. “I hope he isn’t dead. I want to do it myself, and… Consciously.”

Rebecca Two nods along. She slows her pace a minuscule amount as her sister lags more significantly. If either notices, neither mentions it.

“Then again, if he’s dead, I have my bragging rights. Not even a bullet from the world’s deadliest colonist could put a swerve in my aim, huh?” The grin she flashes is sharper than steel as she limps along. She’s getting tired, but they’re near the end of their route. She knows that much. Or she hopes. She doesn’t know how much longer she can keep this up, but doesn’t want to look weak. Not in front of her sister. Again.

“Mm. I suppose he is the deadliest whitehead to rear its head in a while,” Rebecca Two hums, an irritated bemusement in her tone as her lips curl in half a smile. It’s a snide expression. She hates talking about Will - She hates talking about what he’s done even more, but finds it helps to keep an index in her mind. It keeps her blood pumping. “Killed father, in a way. And a few good men, too.”

“And now they have the virus. If they even survived...” Rebecca One’s voice is strained as she adds to the tally, her feelings on the matter very similar to those of her sister. She thinks she has a few minutes left in her. A few steps. They’re almost back; She can do this. She had _demanded_ to do this. She won’t stop short, won’t embarrass herself.

Her body has other ideas. A hot hiss of breath leaves her as pinching, pressurized pain lances through her left side, like some invisible hand has reached into her and squeezed the nerves in her hip in a wrought iron fist, and she grinds to a sudden halt, collapsing her weight onto the walking stick in her hand. She can’t help the sound that comes out of her, something pitched and breathy and loud, stained with her pain and muffled only by clenched teeth. Just as Rebecca Two can’t help but turn, stoic mask twisted into concern.

But neither of them budge.

“What is it?” Her sister asks, voice laced with something tense and sharp. Distressed, but unwilling to show it. She almost sounds impatient as a result. Rebecca One simply shakes her head tersely, head bowed to press her forehead against the stick that keeps her upright. Past the stray hairs from her tight ponytail cascading around her face, she would like to think her grimace is hidden as her teeth grind. It isn’t.

“Can you make it back to camp?

Another stabbing pain. She can’t help the whimper that slips past grit teeth as she shakes her head again after a long moment of consideration, or at least what passes for it. No, she can’t make it back to camp. She can hardly even think past the ache in her gut, numbness tingling down her outer thigh.

And so Rebecca Two stands there, watching her sister heave subtly for breath through her nose. The girl’s already pale knuckles are white around her grip. She swallows dryly, and glances about after sharply exhaling herself, eyes full of something she doesn’t have a name for; Making sure they aren’t being watched. By anyone. By _anything_. They narrow.

Rebecca One is crippled by pain one moment, struggling to stay on her feet. The next, the pressure is alleviated, and she feels her feet leave the ground. A hand twisted into a claw rakes up Rebecca Two’s back in alarm before she realizes she’s being carried, her mind in such a haze that it takes a moment to register.

What?

Perhaps it should give her pause, that her first instinct is for red-black eyes to open wide, darting to ensure they’re not being observed. But it doesn’t, and even when she is sure that they’re not, she still has to swallow her pounding heart back into her chest, breathing coming quick and shallow to avoid any more sharp pains as she watches familiar scenery recede over her sister’s shoulder. She can only stare, one hand fisted tight in the back of Rebecca Two’s shirt. Her sister’s steps are steady, and well paced. Every now and again, she adjusts her grip, and Rebecca One accommodates, still staring.

No amount of swallowing can put her heart back in her place as she’s carried along like a sack of potatoes. She can feel the tension in her sister’s shoulders as she trudges onwards. It’s more than exertion. It’s nerves.

“My walking stick,” she fumbles out at last, the only thing she can think to say. Her mouth is dry. So dry.

“I’ll find you another one,” comes the tense reply, and Rebecca Two adjusts her grip again. Rebecca One’s grip on her sister’s shirt tightens and twists.

“No _I told you so?_ ”

“Not now that you’ve gone and done it for me.”

Rebecca One swallows tightly again, and watches the stick disappear in the foliage as she’s carried off. They won’t talk about this, she decides.

Rebecca Two, silent, concurs.

 

* * *

 

He isn’t sure what part of him he allowed to convince the rest that this was a good idea. There’s no denying the soothing ache in his back and his gut that sings the praises of a day of hard work after so long without, but his shoulder is… Complaining.

Complaining is an understatement.

The stitched puncture in his shoulder is healing well, and it’ll be time to be rid of the stitches soon. But Doctor Burrows has worked him to the bone today, and the wound is agitated, each step feeling as though it tugs on the sutures; Will winces and takes a deep breath as he trudges on. _Some ideas are too big and too important to let people get in the way._

He has no doubt in his mind that when they reach their destination, his father will need his help again. He has, to Elliot’s predictions, been digging and churning earth since early in the morning; But now Doctor Burrows is leading him off, promising something to finish off the day that will be nothing short of an absolute treat. A reward for all their hard work, he had said. Some new discovery, Will is sure. Something that will put the rest to shame, or make him wonder why they had bothered spending six hours prior digging up old bones in a backwater cave by the spring.

“Not far now!”

He hopes not. His father’s voice rings from up ahead, clueless as to Will’s lagging behind; Certainly clueless that it’s all to do with his injury, and nothing to do with some form of perceived laziness. Despite it, Will can’t help but grin to himself, and the weight of the pack over his one good shoulder seems to lessen with his father’s enthusiasm.

Doctor Burrows has always had that effect. Will’s suspicions are confirmed as he finally catches up to his father, who has stopped at the crest of a grand ridge.

“Oh, shit.”

“Will.”

His father’s scolding has no effect as ever as he comes to a stop beside him, peering out over the sight before them. The sun would be blinding, if he wasn’t slowly growing used to it; Instead, he lifts a hand to shield himself from the worst of it, all the better to look out over the sprawling pyramid before him. The second farthest of the three they had seen. It has to be.

That feels like a decade ago. There’s nothing looming over them now.

“Are we going down?” He asks dumbly, before grinning over at his father. This is all he’s wanted, for so long. For a moment, the pain in his shoulder is forgotten.

“Of course. I discovered something at the base of our pyramid that sparked my curiosity. This is just a preliminary examination, of course- It’s of the utmost importance that we are thorough in our excavations. Once we are through with our pyramid, we can always move on to this one, and the next- As a matter of fact we will! There’s too much at stake…”

His father’s words fade into the noise of the jungle. His mouth is dry; He swallows once or twice in an attempt to dispel the feeling before slipping the pack from his shoulder and offering it to Doctor Burrows. “Yeah. Yeah. Hold this.”

His father sputters, but Will doesn’t notice. There’s a closure he’s chasing. He’s been chasing it for a while. Full circle, at the base of this pyramid - Like things were before. Before he knew the twins were in the garden with their wretched Limiter.

Before they killed them.

Will lowers himself onto his backside, heedless of Doctor Burrows’ alarmed crowing, and starts to scoot down the ridge, one foot at a time. He can almost taste what he’ll feel at the bottom. Relief, maybe, or vindication. Freedom? His mouth waters, his mind a haze. This will fix it. To be there, at the base of a new place, with his dad again.

It has to fix it.

Because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if it doesn’t.

“Will! You have to be careful, this place hasn’t been touched by human hands in - in centuries! In millenium! The risk of erosion-”

Risk. Of course there’s risk. Distant though his father’s words are, they and their contents don’t slow him down until he’s mere yards from the bottom of the ridge. There, his foot catches on a root, dirt crumbling beneath him and guaranteeing a snag that sends him catapulting forwards with all the momentum in the world.

Will lets out a yelp as he falls. It’s all he can do, aside throw his hands out to brace himself- Which he doesn’t. Not until the end. Not until he is barrelling face first towards a stone with nothing but fear in his mind, and he throws his arms out to save his front two teeth.

Pain wracks him, then. Like a red hot cattleprod, lancing through his shoulder. Like liquid, molten steel pouring into an open wound. He doesn’t recognize the screaming that fills the air as his own, until it starts to tear at his throat; Even then, he barely recognizes the panted whimpering it fades to. Like a shot dog. Distantly, he can hear his father calling, making his way down the ridge with far more care and caution.

When he brings his hand to his shoulder, it comes away red and slick, even through his shirt. He wonders what is poking his palm as he presses it back with a ragged sob.

The sutures. It’s the waxed sutures, torn and poking through fabric.

As his world starts to spin, Will thinks for a moment he is about to throw up. He pulls his hand back again, staring at the blood and rolling onto his side as he gags. He thinks maybe, he’s about to die. He blinks once, twice, vision swimming and hazy; Three copies of his father, swaying, crouched over him and shouting something in concern he can’t make out.

And then his head thunks back against the dirt beneath him, cushioned only by a swift movement of Doctor Burrows’ hand.

 

As he loses consciousness, Will doesn’t think anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter for a while, I need to get a bit more ahead in my actual writing before I continue publishing. I have three chapters written after this one, and like to generally work four ahead, so expect more when the next chapter is finished.


	5. Part Five: Healing

When he wakes, it’s to Elliot looming focused over him, and a dull, throbbing ache in his shoulder. Every now and again, he feels a tug of skin - With a low groan rumbling in his throat, he lifts his groggy head to look, only for the girl to lift a hand and press it back down firmly, leaving him staring at dunn fabric. He is in his tent. He is in his bedroll. He is… Alive?

“Don’t look,” Elliot orders as she pushes his head down again when he lifts it, but it’s too late. Will’s gaze has already fallen on the gruesome sight of his shoulder a split second before he is stopped, and he feels another wave of nausea pull at his gut.

“Oh, god.”

“Don’t pass out again,” she says, and seems to mean it, though Will can’t imagine why. He lays there, trying to breathe steadily, even as shock wears off and he begins to feel pain in a way that he can process. A whimper leaves him, and he swallows down nausea again.

“What happened to me?”

“You tore open your stitches. You’re lucky most of the internal damage has already healed, or you’d be trapped here far longer than I intend for you to be.” Elliot falls silent as she cuts the thread between her fingers with her teeth and a jerk of her head that makes his skin pull ever so slightly. Will hisses - She fixes him with a look that dares him to test already wavering patience, and he winces, resting his head back against his rudimentary pillow, gulping and closing his eyes as she works.

“Trapped here?”

She lets him stew in silence for a few minutes, and Will is well aware that that is exactly what she is doing, deliberately. He supposes he deserves it, after everything. There is plenty more he deserves, and hopes Elliot will spare him.

“Trapped,” she says at last, firmly as she ties off the sutures for what she hopes will be the last time, gritting her teeth. She doesn’t believe there is any value to be had in a good old fashioned  _ I told you so _ ; She is a strong proponent of the virtue of repetition, however. “You overextended yourself. You hurt yourself.  _ Again _ . And we don’t have the resources to keep… Treating this, so…”

Will opens his eyes, and tries to think past the throbbing in his head as he fixes her with hazy eyes. Elliot looks distressed, despite her best efforts to stay stony. Sounds it, too. “So?” he croaks, although he can imagine where this is going as the girl steels herself, fixing him with a stern gaze. Her brows twitch only a moment in uncertainty before she speaks.

“So I’m not letting you leave this fucking camp until you’re healed, alright? You scared me.”

Elliot’s voice breaks, and Will stares at her in shock, mouth working in silence as he tries to come up with something to say that isn’t some fumbled, idiotic apology. Her choice of words, her vulgarity, has him cowed. He has never known Elliot to… He shuts his mouth and swallows again, feeling something hard well up in his throat against his every desire. 

She takes his silence as invitation. Or a lack of protest. 

It’s all she needs, for it to come spilling out. “When your father carried you back like that, I thought for a moment - I thought something had happened. I thought you were gone, after everything we had - After everything. There was so much blood I didn’t know what to do. For the first time in my life, I didn’t - Didn’t know what to do.”

_ In a world without you in it. _

She won’t say that, but balls her hands into tight fists and sets them in her lap before slowly smoothing them out over her thighs, taking a deep breath in as she does her best to calm. Now isn’t the time to be angry. Not when Will is looking at her like that. Whatever like  _ that _ is.

“So you’re not allowed to leave. Until that’s healed.” A pause, “Until I can trust you not to do… That, again. To me. To you. I can’t keep stitching your shoulder. It… It won’t heal right.”

Will just stares, slowly losing the battle with the lump in his throat. He thinks it might be vomit, with the way it burns, its inevitability. The way it makes his eyes water. But then he stops fighting, rolling over onto his uninjured side.

A monumental sob ripples out of him, unimpeded; So loud he thinks it must startle the birds outside the tent. It certainly startles  _ him _ . He barely recognizes the voice stained sound as his own, but Elliot is looming over him, gently resting a hand on the small of his back and smoothing it over his hip in alarm.

“Will?”

He shakes his head, body shaking as he hiccups and gasps through tears. There are a few moments he almost chokes, and Elliot - Elliot is like a deer in the headlights, whispering soft reassurances, but frozen in shock as she gently pets his back. He flounders as he struggles to breathe, feeling strangled by far more than his tears, and wonders if she has ever felt the same, alone in the Deeps. Before Drake. Before Will. Before Chester, and Cal.

“Cal’s dead,” he rasps out suddenly, and the words are almost a gag as he claps a hand over his mouth, screwing his eyes shut tight. His tears are hot as they roll freely, and somehow, that is what his mind clings to as it splinters. How can his tears be so _ hot? _

“Yeah,” Elliot whispers, swallowing as her hand stills on his back. Her thumb rubs little circles over a bump in his spine, and she feels him hiccup again. Feels useless, mouth dry and heart pounding. What comfort is there to offer? “I’m sorry.”

“And they’re dead too. So... So isn’t it  _ over?” _

They. The twins. Elliot knows what he’s referring to immediately as he rolls back over partially to look at her pleadingly, a harsh exhale leaving him through his tears as the strange position puts a strain on fresh stitches. She feels her chest tighten as she guides him back onto his back gently, trying to breathe as deep as she can. To chase the tightness away.

“Yeah,” she says simply again, her voice strained. “It is.”

Will closes his eyes again, reaching to claw both his hands up his face. She watches his nails dig into his hairline, a ragged sound leaving him at the feeling past his sobs. They’re fading now, but barely - At least he can breathe. He can breathe. Will holds onto that, and gulps a breath down into his lungs like a drowned man before another whimper forces itself out of him. A gasp, and another shudder, before the words wring past his lips.

“So why can’t I stop thinking about it? All of it. Cal, the twins, the - The fire, the…” the words are so ragged they’re barely intelligible. They had started out fine, but the decay is almost instant- Elliot has to lean closer to hear them past the muffling of his hands over his face, rubbing so fiercely she’s worried he’ll hurt himself. “The twins. We shot them. I shot them, I…”

“Will.”

Her hands are as gentle as they can be, firm nonetheless as she grasps his wrists, prying his rubbing hands away from his face - He fights her at first, but gives in, staring up at her with a face wracked in grief. His cheeks shine; His sunburn is agitated, peeling in places it isn’t ready, and tears and snot mix to smear his expression, the lines in his face begetting suffering far beyond his age. “Fuck,” he whispers, and his voice pitches; breaks. “We shot them. I shot them.”

“We had to,” Elliot murmurs, and releases his hands when she’s sure they won’t be used to wound. Her own voice breaks, but she steels herself. “We… Had to, Will. It wasn’t just for Cal. It wasn’t our fault, we… We  _ had _ to.”

She’s right. Of course she’s right. It doesn’t soothe the sorrow in chest, soothe the nausea in his gut as he chokes again. And again. Will sits up, grabbing at her hands in desperation; Her skin feels cold, in comparison to his own. He must be burning. He must be melting. For a moment, he stares at her, shaking, and pawing at her cool hands as if they’re the only thing on earth. She squeezes his clammy ones in return, watching him with an expression sick with grief.

And then Will chokes again. Elliot lets him go as he catapults to the side, and is violently, suddenly ill. The smell of it invades her senses, mixes with the memory of smoke, and blood, and she bites down on her bottom lip as she squeezes her eyes shut, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Will retches again, and Elliot closes her eyes as she wraps arms around his waist. She rests her forehead between his shoulders as she begins to shake. As _ they  _ begin to shake, together, Will’s hand curling in the fabric of his bedroll in a white knuckled grip.

They sit in silence.

 

* * *

 

 

She lies awake for hours, thinking.

The light of the second sun doesn’t penetrate the cave they’ve chosen for shelter, but the light has nothing to do with her restlessness. She knows she is crippling herself with exhaustion, beyond the struggle she already faces. Cripple.  _ Useless _ .

Can’t even walk patrol right.

Her little hands curl into fists until her nails dig into her palms, before she reaches up to rub her face, breathing out a sharp sound tinted with her voice. Her outer thigh is still tingling numb. When she thinks about what her sister had done, she feels… 

She feels what?

Her throat tightens. She grits her teeth at the lump in her throat, at the roaring in her chest she can’t name, and presses her thumbs into her eyelids until she sees stars dance before her eyes; She can hear Rebecca Two outside, hear the click of flint as she tries to spark a fire. Getting ready to cook them dinner, no doubt. Dinner she caught. Dinner she prepared for cooking. 

Distress howls and twists in her chest. 

She knows what to do with distress. She doesn’t have to fathom the cause, or the lasting consequence to make use of it; Brows furrow as her hands clench into fists once more, and she swallows down the lump in her throat. Forces it into a mold she knows well. 

She isn’t a cripple. Isn’t useless. She doesn’t need to be toted about like some kind of handbag - She certainly doesn’t need the stick her sister had brought her after they had gotten home from patrol, set down beside her makeshift bed like an offering at a shrine, and she doesn’t need her -

“Pity!” she exclaims in a cry as she staggers to her feet, steadying herself for a moment before stalking to the mouth of the cave. The clicking has stopped; When she emerges, Rebecca Two’s head has swiveled to their shelter, a lone, dark brow lofted at her sister.

“Are you-”

“What do you think this is?”

“Woah.”

If Rebecca One’s voice is hard and harsh and accusatory, her sister’s is stunned. Rebecca Two lifts her hands in apparent surrender, and rises to her feet from where she had crouched, brow still lifted and climbing ever higher. Rebecca One stares at her, long and hard, and that unfamiliar feeling roars in her gut again. She snarls aloud, beginning to pace; favoring her wounded side.

“You think I need you? You think I can’t take care of myself?”

Rebecca Two doesn’t think that, and the accusation makes her teeth grind. She sits through the explosion anyway, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes at her sister. She had known this would happen. Or something like it; Her every instinct had told her not to indulge that itch for kindness. Her every instinct was right.

“I don’t need your pity. I don’t need your help, I don’t need that… Stupid stick!” Rebecca One’s voice cracks like a whip as she rounds on her sister with a snarl, hands curled into tight fists. Rebecca Two lifts her chin coldly, dark eyes narrowed.

“Going to hit me?” She dares, as her gaze flicks down to her sister’s clenched fists. Something in her makes the corners of her lips curl with bemusement, at this ineffective rage. “Going to teach me a lesson, hm?” She says her sister’s name then, dripping with mirth. A sound like a hyena’s bark. She leers.

Rebecca One snarls again as she lunges, hands outstretched for her sister’s throat.

It’s as easy as breathing, and when she acts, Rebecca Two feels no tug on her heartstrings. She steps off to the side, sticking out her foot with a scowl and watching her sister crumple to the ground with a yell that sounds wounded, only catching herself in the instant before she hits the ground. Rebecca One lays there, held up by her arms, shoulders taught and body trembling with rage. Rebecca Two watches, dark irises fixed calmly on her sister.

It’s… Pathetic, isn’t it?

So then what else is she feeling, as she watches Rebecca One struggle?

“I can’t do this,” Rebecca One rasps, not looking up as she pants for breath.

“Get up?” Her sister asks, and a dark brow climbs; But her tongue feels heavy, her mouth dry as she watches Rebecca One’s hands curl into claws. Watches her dig blunt nails into the dirt, clawing until one chips with a whimper that is all breath and no bite.

“Live like this,” the twin on the ground replies, and her voice breaks, too soon and too suddenly to stop it as she shakes. Rebecca Two watches as her sister lifts a hand to run through her hair, through her loose and messy ponytail; It balls into a fist and tugs before the girl lets out another breathy sound of distress. “I think I’m dying?”

That is enough to stir her stony heart to beat. Rebecca Two feels it leap in her chest, stopping in her throat and making her croak in alarm. “What? No, you - You’re healing just fine! It’s all…”

“I can’t stop shaking,” Rebecca One gasps, and her eyes are burning with something - She reaches up to rub at them, and her wrist comes away wet, smearing her face with the dirt she’s clawed up. Her throat is tight, something hard and heavy clogging it each time she swallows, and she gulps for breath. “I- I feel like I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

When Rebecca One whispers her sister’s name, it’s soft as she rolls onto her back, hauling her trembling body back to prop herself up on a tree. Her breathing is coming ragged and shallow, and she swallows, lifting her chin in an attempt to make it come easier. Nothing helps; Watery eyes are wild and full of fear as she looks to the sky, grasping at her healed wound to feel for blood. Nothing. Heat streams down her face and drips from her chin as she gasps for breath. There’s nothing wrong with her, so why is she...

Her name. Urgently called, and the feeling of Rebecca Two’s hand grasping the hand that grasps at her wound. Her sister’s skin feels cool, by comparison, but her voice sounds distant as she heaves for breath. “There’s nothing. You’re fine, it’s not bleeding, it’s… What’s wrong with you?” Rebecca Two’s words are breathy and tinted with an emotion neither recognizes. Fear, sure. What else?

“I don’t know,” she chokes, and looks down to where their hands meet with a choke of breath. Tears are still streaming down her face, her breathing coming ragged as her body trembles. “I can’t do this. I can’t be crippled, I can’t be useless, I…”

She claws at her sister’s hand. Nails dig in as she squeezes, and Rebecca Two can only wince, squeezing back where she kneels at her sister’s side. She has never seen her sister cry. Not when they were children; Not even when she was shot. She recognizes it only from watching Will dissolve in moments he thought he was alone.

“You’re not useless. You’re… You’re going to be fine. You’re just healing, it’s natural to… To…” Rebecca Two fumbles her way through the attempt at comfort, foreign on her lips. Her words feel thick and slow; All wrong. Confusing. Rebecca One’s nails dig in deeper, and she feels skin break in crimson crescents - She hisses. “Knock it off.”

Rebecca One’s grip loosens. 

She goes back to staring at the sky then, trying to breathe past the lump in her throat and to steady her heart. She blinks away the heat that blurs her vision, feeling it roll down her face and drip down her neck. She isn’t wounded. Not anymore. Whatever this is, it will pass. It has to.

“I don’t know what to do,” she rasps at last, her voice rough as she tries to gather her thoughts. “I can’t do anything. It’s like- It’s like my body is fighting me. I try, but it just - It just gives up.”

Rebecca Two is silent for a long while, nursing the place her sister’s nails had dug in; Every now and again, Rebecca One will squeeze again. Rebecca Two squeezes back, and swallows dryly as the movement makes blood well to those crescent marks. She watches it drip down to wet the place where their hands meet, feeling her heart pound slow as she comes down from… Panic. 

That is what she had felt, when her sister had rasped about dying. Panic.

“I don’t care,” she proclaims at last, suddenly, and Rebecca One sniffs sharply, looking down from the sky to fix her sister with a blank stare. Not entirely there. Rebecca One looks exhausted, dark circles beneath her eyes, and her sister narrows her eyes as the grip on her hand tightens. “I don’t care if you’re useless. Not now, not… I’ll look out for you. We look out for each other. Until this passes.”

“But I can’t do anything,” Rebecca One whispers, voice still sounding like sandpaper. It cracks on the last word, and she closes her eyes; Rebecca Two shakes her head as she slips her hand free of her sister’s grip and regards her sternly, wiping her own blood off on her trousers in a smear. 

“You’re like me,” she says after a moment of silence, resolute, as though that is the end of the discussion. “We’re the same. Never surrendered in our lives. I’m not letting you start now.”

Rebecca One lets her head rest back against the tree, nodding faintly; She flinches as something touches her face, before registering her sister’s calloused hand, gently smudging away dirt and tears in an effort to make her more recognizable. She says nothing as she swallows, leaning into the touch; A low, steady click rumbles in her throat, barely audible, a sound she has neither heard nor made before. A sharp sigh leaves her, but she does not try to stop it.

If Rebecca Two hears, she doesn’t comment; The silent agreement lingers.

 

They’ll protect each other. They always have.


	6. Part Six: Closure

Some things are better done alone.

Some things _have_ to be done alone.

One foot in front of the other, Will’s mind is a white haze. He’s walked the path before; He’s walked it _many_ times, and the steady rhythm of his pace numbs him into complacency. He’s walked the trail with Elliott, he’s walked it with Bartleby. He’s walked it with the pair of them, and passed by it with his father none the wiser. But some weeks ago, smoke from beyond the escarpment had stopped furling on the horizon. The fire had gone out. So this time, the first time since, and the first time alone, feels in its own way like the first time altogether.

He needs to see it. Needs to see what’s left.

There are easier things in life to process than the breakthrough he had shared with Elliott some days prior, alone together in his tent. Quiet, after everything, and better for it, tears so heavy they had choked into his lungs and gagged him. Anything is easier to process than that, he thinks. So this, far less dangerous than staggering down a hill face first into a rock, is the first step towards it. He has to go.

It had been no simple task to slip out of camp. But there is a monsoon brewing now, one of many that he knows is to come over the next few days - They had spied the clouds on the horizon. It casts the jungle in a dull, humid grayness, a wet sort of heat that is a welcome change from the sun beating down on his back, but at its deepest, the jungle is _dark_. He is grateful for that in a way, he thinks. It makes it easier to watch the trail, but forget the way his heart had leapt into his throat at the sight of three pairs of footprints that day. 

The darkness doesn’t doesn’t change the way it hammers on now at just the memory.

It had been a morning in paradise. Things had been simple. He lifts his hands to drag down his face without thinking, rubbing at peeling sunburn, and shudders out a breath at the moisture he finds there. His eyes sting. A moment later, sweat drips from his nose. From his chin. Will brushes it away the source with the backs of his hands, one eye at a time, and sniffs, fighting the bobbing of his throat.

“Stop it,” he whispers to himself, voice tight. An inch from breaking. “Stop it, Will.”

 _What can anyone do if you won’t help yourself?_ He had asked the question of Cal, once. His hands curl tightly into fists as he clenches his jaw, taking one more swipe at his burning eyes and breathing in deep before staring up at the entrance before him. He isn’t sure when he had stopped moving, or when he had arrived; He’s reminded of the way the Limiter’s feet had kept kicking after Elliott put a bullet in his brain, only in reverse. 

Now, he can’t bring himself to move an inch. The machine driving his steady pace has stopped, and he’s not sure what it will take to get it started again. The slow creak of the floodgates above him, the rain that pitters down before it begins to pour, does nothing to mask the scent of smoke that emanates from the passageway before him. And rot.

Oh, he _aches_ to go back. 

He can’t. Not now.

Will does his very best not to breathe as he finds it within himself to move. To _force_ himself to move. It’s all that his momentum can be described as, and it feels like a death march all the while; The passage is dark, rainwater rushing from behind and lapping at his heels in a steady flow as the monsoon rages on outside. _The basin must be slightly below the rest of the jungle,_ he realizes, and the analytical mindset helps soothe him as he continues onward. _That’s how any vegetation survived in the first place, even with the sun cooking the basin like some kind of oven. It must drain through the pool they…_

The scent of rot grows stronger, and Will freezes as something wet squelches beneath his boot, clenching his jaw and staring straight ahead. The sensation, the sound, it raises his hackles - Every hair on his body stands, the feeling crawling up the back of his neck like a caterpillar. 

The Limiter. 

He won’t look down; He doesn’t want to know what bone is offering the resistance that curves the sole of his shoe, doesn’t _need_ to know. And so he presses on, swallowing an initial gag at the slight crack that follows further shifting of his weight. His eyes water at the reek, and he clasps a hand over his mouth and nose as he blinks away the reaction to the smell, swallowing the spit that wells in his mouth in a nauseous surge.

_Oh, god._

There is no pity welling in his gut. It isn’t his first experience with the smell of a rotting body disturbed. He remembers digging his fingers into humid Coprolite flesh, remembers the wet warmth. How easily skin had given; Peeling and pressing in like a thin film, and remembers the mass graves. The thought, if he lets it linger, makes him dizzier than the corpse he had just passed. _Demons. The Styx are demons._

The toe of his boot crumples against a chunk of rubble, startling him from his thoughts. Steadying himself against the wall, Will hisses irritably, wincing away the pain before blinking at the pile in front of him. 

It’s neat. Bizarrely so. 

His jaw tightens, brows knitting together in confusion as he squats to lift one of the stones in his palm. Rainwater laps at the seat of his pants, at his ankles, and he swallows, mouth dry.

_Odd... Didn’t Elliott say she collapsed this tunnel?_

 

* * *

 

It’s Rebecca One’s idea. 

The fire had burned bright, and hot; They could see it on the horizon, even in their camp, miles from the burning refuse that they had called home for near a month. The smoke that trailed from over the escarpment had only recently begun to dwindle with the heavy rains, and memories of time spent in the clearing, their Limiter off hunting, had begun to nag her again; Even now, stalking alone through the heavy underbrush with nothing but her walking stick at her side in the dull gray light of a brewing storm, she can feel thoughts she doesn’t care to indulge tugging at her consciousness. 

The heat of the jungle before a monsoon is always stifling. Suffocating, even, but it pales in comparison to waking with water in her lungs and a dull ache in her side, the kind of pain that is so strong a body can’t comprehend it without time. Unable to breathe. She sees fire dancing above the water, and gulps in more liquid instead of air, thrashing. Then, she sees nothing. She gulps down air now, and doesn’t want to remember, but there is only so much she can forget.

That day had been peace. More peace than she had known in her entire life, enough of it to cripple her guard, to leave her defenses lacking, and enough to roll almost a decade and a half of training onto its back, belly up. She had relaxed. Idiot. _Idiot!_ She hates herself for it, even now, bitterness swelling up so thick and heavy it threatens to choke her. It had been peace.

And then it had been fear.

She hates the word. Hates it, but that is what it had been. Rebecca One’s hand curls into a claw around the stick as she remembers, knuckles flashing white with the strength of her grip as she stalks onward. Will, rummaging through her coat, through her things, through her life, through her head. It had been _instinct_ , driven by a rage so blind she can’t think through it even in memory. She had lifted her hand, lifted her scythe, he had _turned_ -

 _Stop._  

There’s no point in fixating on the past. One foot in front of the other; She unclenches her fist and feels the blood rush back to her fingers. Her blood. She is alive. Crippled, for now, but alive. That is all that matters. It had been her idea to clear the way into their old safe haven, knowing there was a good chance that their steel shelter protected some of their supplies, and she tells herself that is the only motivation. But she would be lying to pretend that there was not some hope in her too, with each new bit of rubble discarded, that they might find something; A foot, a hand, an _anything_ , so badly mangled that she no longer has to worry about the tuft of white hair atop the head it’s attached to. 

They find nothing but the corpse of their Limiter, rotting just inches from the cave-in, a hole in the back of his skull. And when the passage is cleared, Rebecca Two mutters something to herself about heading back to camp. About a long day, and needing rest, but Rebecca One’s heart is beating so loud she can hardly hear her sister over the din. 

She can see the pool from here, shimmering surface catching the eternal sunlight and betraying none of what it has seen in the past month.

One foot in front of the other.

The smell of rot is something she doesn’t dread anymore. It hardly registers as it hits the back of her throat, filling her mouth and lungs as she steps over the corpse, and she breathes it out sharply, feeling the nerves in her side twinge. Rebecca Two wouldn’t understand it, the need to see this place alone, to see it in the dull light of a brewing storm; To touch the scorched ground where she had been shot. Where the last of her agency had been stripped from her. The ash of decimated underbrush stains her knee as she lowers herself and brushes her fingers through the dust, staining spindly fingers gray. 

No bullet. No crimson stain of blood beneath the ash as she brushes it aside. Nothing.

There is nothing here to mark the passage of an entire chapter of her life, and the realization strikes the air from her lungs as the sky opens, warm rain dousing her and kicking up the dust. She coughs it out of her lungs as she staggers to her feet, leaning heavily on the stick at her side to steady herself as she sways, feeling lightheaded. _This can’t be it._ But it is; There is nothing here but what they had left. There is nothing here but dust.

Shell shocked eyes drift vacantly to their warped shelter, and she limps over to it after a moment, mind buzzing with static; A calloused, soot-stained hand brushes over one of the walls, and she blinks once, twice, pulling back to rub the soot between finger and thumb as she looks back to the ground by what remains of the coat hook. If she squints, and she does, she can make out the belt buckle of one of their fatigues through the haze of rain-stirred ash.

There’s nothing here but quiet. It soaks into her every pore with the rain, whether she likes it or not. The pool doesn’t catch the sunlight anymore; There’s no sunlight to catch, the water stirred by the downpour and mixed into an ashen gray film, and she feels her dry tongue stick to the roof of her mouth as she swallows, leaning back on her stick and trying to breathe. How she must look right now, drenched in rain, caked in the ashes of another life, and nothing to show for it; She lifts a hand to drag through her hair, pulling it hard at the roots to feel something, to wrench forth the whimper stuck in her throat. It comes breathy and hard.

 

The sob drags him out of his thoughts, and chills his blood like ice.


	7. Part Seven: Contact

In the end, it’s just another luxury denied him. Closure. Healing. It makes sense, in the cruel and unusual way that everything seems to make sense lately- That he would find a new, festering wound there, standing over the pool, leaning heavily on a walking stick and sobbing her throat raw. It does nothing to warm the chill in his blood, the knowledge that this makes sense. That somehow, it was inevitable. Because peace is a luxury denied him.

Will thinks that he should run, but as she turns to him, it all too suddenly becomes too late to do that. He is frozen, but he is lucky- So is she. Will blinks, blue eyes watering with ash and blinking away rain as he stares at a ghost. As Rebecca One heaves for breath, she stares back at a bullet, heart hammering so hot and loud in her ears that she can barely hear.

“You!”

“You’re alive?”

The words spill from their lips at the same time; Different voices, different words, different frequencies. Frozen shock and desperation mixes with the sound of rage so hot it makes the world flash red, a desperation and numbness of a different sort- And Rebecca staggers forward from the pond, lunging for his throat before either of them can process it.

She doesn’t feel  _ anything _ .

In another state, in another life, in another time, he may have stood against her. But in this one, her weight isn’t the only thing that bowls him onto the ground, winding the both of them and leaving them reeling, stumbling to recover on the ground as she climbs on top of him; It’s the look in her eyes, irises such a deep black they are almost red. Grief driven to madness, staring back at him. Crazed. She hasn’t blinked. The feeling of her hands around his throat, wringing- Will gasps in a breath as both hands come to grasp frantically at her wrists, scrabbling to pry them back enough that he can breathe. He can’t. He can’t breathe.

He panics.

She feels his legs kick out from beneath her before she processes what it means, or what’s happening to her as a result. She hasn’t looked away, from the moment their eyes met- And in her peripheral, she can see her knuckles turning white, can see his hands scrabbling and his face turning red. That isn’t what she cares about. She wants the pulse that hammers against her palm to stop. So she can rest. Rebecca gasps and snarls as she is thrown, nails digging into his throat and drawing blood like claws as she is forced off of him, forced beneath him, pinned beneath his weight on her stomach. A cry rips itself from her lips, something animal and pained that tears at her throat but doesn’t register as her own. It doesn’t matter to her. It doesn’t matter to him.

She killed Cal.

Will stares down at her, in the moment they recover from the sudden and rapid change. The cry she lets out echoes, but doesn’t connect, and he feels his heart twist and contort into something else. Something with teeth. A pant that sounds more like a sob leaves him before the first fist connects with her face, and then her hands are lifting to protect herself, staggered with the weight behind each blow as she tucks her chin to her chest. Her arms are trembling with each strike, and he doesn’t care; he wants to see her face, before he... Wants to see her face before he  _ what? _ Kills her? Is that what he’s going to do?

_ “Will!” _

It takes everything in her to find the emotion she needs to make her voice crack. The pain isn’t enough, but the cry of his name does come out sounding frantic, and afraid. A plea. She has used it once before, and the blows stop for a moment as she stares up at him past her arms, panting for breath. His eyes are as wild as hers are, as they meet, and she heaves to fill her lungs beneath him. With him.

There is nothing else but this. There is nothing but the stare between them as they reel, a truce between two animals as they recover, as  _ she _ recovers, as one of her hands slowly gropes through the muck of wet ash beneath them, and her fingers close around a rock. 

And then there is a crack, and a cry. And Will can only crumple. Rolling off of her, he grasps blindly at the side of his head, the blow striking so hard he can barely see.  _ Bitch. Bitch! _ He watches his own feet kick out at the muck in an attempt to scramble back, vision blurred by rain and rimmed with black, and they don’t feel like his own. He watches her rise to her feet before she staggers, falling back onto him and closing that iron grip around his throat to keep herself upright. 

Stained with ash. Soaked with rain. Soaked with blood. Her fingers slip against his throat, rub dirt into his wounds as she squeezes. It stings- Will gasps in one more breath as he feebly scrabbles at her wrists, nails digging in like claws until he feels her skin break. No reaction but the tightening of her grip, and a shift in her position; She is staring down at him with empty, wild eyes. Waiting for something.

He kicks, to no effect- His hands lift to claw at his throat, but they feel heavy, and slow. The tips of his fingers are cold. As his vision swims, the realization strikes him- She’s not waiting for anything.

She’s watching him die.

She watches his eyes tear up; She’s seen it so many times, and not once has it made her feel anything but satisfaction. The rush is no different this time- She wonders what he’s thinking. She wonders if he knows that Elliott will never find his body. She wonders if he knows that she will spend the rest of her life looking, until Rebecca One takes care of her, too. The thought is enough to make her stomach tighten in something that is almost mad, silent laughter; It’s all she has in her to process, though she isn’t smiling, and she certainly isn’t laughing. The shortness of breath comes first; When she feels her own grip loosen, she is just as surprised as he is.

_ Oh. Oh, no. Not now, not… _

She’s so close. So close to the end of all of this.

The moment of weakness is enough for him to gasp in a lungful of air, and he does, his will to fight roaring. A hand lifts to weakly shove at her chin, trying to pry her off of him- She puts her weight into her work, snarling and digging her teeth into the meat of his forearm as ashen slime makes his hand slip from her jaw. Will cries out in what is decidedly fear, pain overridden as the sound forces the last of the air from his lungs; His vision swims again as she yanks back and spits his blood in disgust, renewing her effort and breathing in deep as his leg twitches.

There is another twinge in her side, and her whimper is lost in the downpour.

Almost there. She’s so  _ close _ .

Will thrashes beneath her with renewed force, and she has to lean back to stay out of the reach of his clawing fingers, but it is the sudden, lancing pain in her side that finishes it. The tingle in her thigh. Will watches her eyes go wild with something he can’t define before he feels her lock up on top of him, and then she crumples with a cry, curling in on herself. Her hands leave his throat to grasp her own body as she staggers to the side, supporting herself with one arm on her hands and knees- He can breathe.

He can  _ breathe _ .

He stumbles back on his hands and feet, slipping in the mud as he desperately puts space between them. His head is throbbing, his arm is throbbing, his knuckles are throbbing- He can barely think, and he lingers there in stunned silence as he pants for breath, blood and ashen gray staining everything it touches. And he stares.

Rebecca is in agony. It’s obvious as she crawls backwards, putting distance between them and panting like a wounded animal. Of the two of them, there is no doubt she is the better off, he thinks- And yet she clutches her side and lets out another twisted gasp, leaning down until her forehead presses into wet ash and her arm gives way. He watches her roll onto her back, watches her teeth grind and her jaw strain with effort, face white as paper as she grasps at her own side, small frame tight with the struggle it takes not to writhe.

It’s all she can do, to stop herself from thrashing. Her eyes sting as she shuts them, and when she barks her sister’s name on a broken, keening plea, twisting in on herself, Will is galvanized.

He can barely think, and as he staggers to his feet to stumble into a run, he doesn’t think to look back, either.

 

Not once.


	8. Part 8: Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buckle up, this is a long one! Consider it an apology for the short but traumatic previous chapter. Coincidentally, I'll also be posting a one-off deleted scene that didn't make the cut here with the Rebecca Twins that, depending on your taste and how you decide to read it, will either make you feel infinitely better or infinitely worse. This chapter jumps around a bit perspective and timeline wise, but I trust you'll be able to figure out what belongs where and who's doing what. Enjoy.

He doesn’t stop running until he can feel his legs again.

The cold seeps into them first, but it takes its time, insidious and slow. It’s the rain, he knows, that soaks his pants and makes them stick to his skin; But then comes the burning, of overexerted muscle and the stinging of cuts smeared with dirt and ash. His throat stings too. He’d clawed gashes there- _Him_ , not her. Trying to get her off of him.

Finally, Will stops, and leans heavy against a tree, trembling fit to collapse. 

One is alive. If one is alive, both are alive. 

If both are alive, they will be coming for him. Coming for all of them.

The trembling is coming from somewhere deep. It feels like his bones are rattling as he heaves for breath through a sore windpipe, swollen and agitated and difficult to draw breath through at all. He swallows bile, nails digging into the tree that supports him as the involuntary motion makes him wince and grimace; It hurts. Everything hurts. He doesn’t know what to focus on first, head spinning. Thinking about the twins makes him nauseous, makes his vision sway, so he tries not to - But as he reaches up to touch his throat and his fingertips come away bloody, he has to swallow back vomit again. His head. His head is pounding- When he reaches up to the source, his hand comes back bloodier, and he has to blink away tunnel vision, eyes burning with salt and dirt.

She would have bashed his head in if he’d let her. But he hadn’t.

So would he have beaten her to death, if she hadn’t stopped him?

He lets out a sound like a pant tinted with pained breath as he pushes away from the tree, staggering on. One foot in front of the other- His head. God, his _head_ . He has to make it back to camp. He has to make it back home, he has to _warn_ them. The ringing in his ears crescendos, and he can only make it a few more steps before he has to give in, pitching down onto all fours to be violently sick. He has nothing left to churn up - Bile burns his throat, nearly suffocates him, and when he stumbles back away from it, he nearly lands on his back, supporting himself on burning arms and rasping for breath as the rain stings bloody, sunburnt skin. 

The sky is gray, past the dark that rims his vision. The rain blurs his sight, and he scoots back to prop himself up against a tree, sighing raggedly as his wet shirt presses between his shoulderblades. It feels… Good. Cold. Like an icepack on a bruise after running into the wrong kids on the way home from school. Like this, when clouds obscure the rest of the world, he can almost pretend he is there. The sky stretches on forever, the sun a dull light overhead, and the world is warm.

The world is warm, and he is tired.

_No, wait! I just want to go home!_

His throat tightens around his brother’s memory like she is strangling him all over again, and Will closes his eyes,  heart so heavy in his chest he feels like he can’t breathe. The tears don’t sting, with his eyes closed- They’re hot, like the rest of him, but they come easier than thinking, and he lets them flow. Down his cheeks, down his neck, stinging his wounds; They disappear beneath his shirt, and he swallows again, throat so sore it makes his head spin. 

_I’m so sorry, Will. Come here. It’s okay._

He lets his head rest back against the tree, feels his limbs grow heavy and slow. Sleep creeps on him like a long, slow whisper, and he is too tired to fight it, heartbeat pounding in his throat. He can’t sleep here. He can’t rest. Not until Elliott and his father know, until they’re safe, until...

_Is it?_

White lashes flutter weakly, one more time, and fingertips slip from their raft of consciousness, disappearing beneath the sea.

_Yes. And so are we. I’m sorry._

There are worse things than sleep.  


* * *

 

She has never been able to sleep well in storms. 

When she had been small, many had been the times a Levant would whip her up out of her rest with static crawling over her skin and every hair standing on end. She had her mother, then; And she had found something there, wrapped up in gentle arms and shivering as the crackling wind and lightning had swept through the streets outside. And so the fear of Levants had become something warm, and the warmth had become an excuse, an excuse to leverage against the self-loathing, when she was old enough for it to come. 

It had come early. Watching her mother bear the brunt of the life of a woman with a child and no husband, there was no space left for the blame to settle but slowly on her shoulders, like silt layered heavy on the riverbeds here in the garden. 

Sheltered beneath the rocky outcrop of the cave she and Will take cover in during their long watches, Elliott skips a stone across a puddle outside, and watches the rain.

By the time she is ten, Levants still wake her, if only for the excuse of the only comfort she feels she deserves. They become soothing. Warm and dry, a stark contrast to the wetness of the blood from a split lip, or the tears on her cheeks, or tender knuckles and wrists earned by a few wrong words to other, _normal_ children.

She heals too fast. Her eyes are too dark. They spit at her feet, in her face sometimes, and call her names she doesn’t understand. _Blackhead_. 

When she is eleven, Elliott asks as her mother cleans and dries her face. Asks what is wrong with her, asks why she is different; And at fourteen, when she remembers the wince she had received that day, and the pain in her mother’s eyes before such a gentle explanation, she decides her only choice is to leave. She is too lean, too tall; Her skin is too pale, and her hair is too dark, and there is red in her irises where she thinks there should be blue. 

She is old enough to understand the names she is called, and knows her mother deserves a warmer, drier life than the one she can have with Elliott in it.

Somehow, the leaving doesn’t hurt. It’s what comes after.

In the Deeps, she learns Levants don’t deserve her fear. There are other kinds of storms; Storms of sensation, storms of violence, storms that leave her wet with blood or tears or other things, and so tired she thinks she’d rather die than bring herself to ever move again. But she always dries. She always gets up. 

She heals too fast. She sees too well, and hears too well, and for the first time in her life, those are good things. One day she makes her escape, a burst of sudden opportunity aided by the first good man she has known in her life.

Drake is firm, like a rock, and he is the one who explains that her skin has layers. That when things hurt, it is a part of her dying to save the rest. That it doesn’t have to be a bad thing; That she can spend the rest of her life dying to survive, and that she will be okay.

Still, Elliott thinks, she prefers to be dry.

The storms here are wet, and she is far from used to the feeling that starts to cling to her skin when they linger too long. Even the damp humidity before and after them is almost too much; It makes her want to itch out of her body, like a tickle somewhere she can’t reach, or shrapnel embedded in her skin, plugging in her lifeblood but aching to be removed all at once. Elliott picks at one of her fingernails idly as she watches the puddles pool outside her stony refuge; Reaches up to brush away a trailing droplet of water that drips from her hair as it crawls down her neck, a remnant of her dash from her tent to here. 

The thunder is loud, and it is what had woken her as it rolled across the jungle. There is some part of her that is surprised Will hasn’t joined her, but she supposes after her outburst…

It isn’t fair to put that weight on her shoulders alone, she tries to remember. He had scared her; She is allowed to feel scared. She is allowed to feel hurt and angry, and those feelings don’t make her a burden, not here, at least. This is a new life, and a new place; As she digs her nails into her palms and fidgets the toe of one boot against the ground, she tries to remember that.

She just wishes it was a bit drier.

She wishes too that Doctor Burrows would actually look after his son. She wishes she could meet just one grown man that is good that isn’t Drake. She wishes for a lot of things- But most of them are apparently easier wished for than found.

Elliott watches Burrows fumble around outside, frantically transporting artifacts pulled from the base of the nearest pyramid to his own tent to keep them out of the rain. She wonders how he even has space left to sleep, with the glimpses she has caught of its insides, and despite the distaste he leaves in her mouth, there is something amusing about his scurrying. He reminds her of a hunter, with his lanky legs and scrabbling nature, albeit a particularly stupid one. They make eye contact, and he says something mid-crouch, hunched over an artifact. She can’t hear him over the rain, and she could guess, but chooses not to- She lifts a brow sardonically instead and lifts her hand to offer him a wave with a waggle of her fingers.

 _Sorry_ , she mouths, and points to her ear. _Can’t hear you._

He says it whatever it is again, and she’s sure he’s asking for help, but she is _overcome_ with vindictive apathy. She huffs helplessly, the gesture as overexaggerated as the shrug that accompanies it as she points to her ear again, leering at him. He exclaims something, loud and frustrated enough to be heard over the rain, no doubt calling her something delightful for her lack of assistance- And he stuffs a few shards of wet pottery into his tent before rounding and turning his attention away from his precious relics. Her brow twitches in irritation, her eyes narrowing. _What is he doing now?_

He’s making his way to Will’s tent. Surely he’s not that stupid, surely he can feel her eyes drilling holes into the back of his head like a horse eyes a fly. As he reaches for the flap of the tent Elliott barks her surprise with all the fury of an attack dog, springing to her feet. “HEY!”

He hears that apparently, and stops, lifting both hands in surrender or apology as she stalks out of the cave- But that isn’t enough. She descends on him with twice the fury, shoving him in the chest hard enough to make him stumble. He looks shell shocked. And pale. 

“What the hell is wrong with you? Are you dead in the head? He’s resting, you ungrateful…”

Elliott fumes, trying and failing to parse something cohesive enough to express her anger. She thinks for a moment that her face and posture may have done the trick, before he opens his mouth with the gall to sound indignant.

“If you won’t help me, Will will. This research we’re doing here is too-”

“Worthless!” Elliott cries, throwing her hands in the air. “It’s worthless, you doddering idiot! You airheaded, senile bat!” She jabs her finger into his chest then, her tone becoming harsh and angry. “We’re _never_ going back to the surface. What don’t you get about that? You’re _never_ going back! So for once in your life, can you just put Will first? He’s your son. You’re supposed to… Supposed to…”

Elliott fumbles, then. She doesn’t know what fathers are supposed to do; She takes a deep and shaky breath in, feeling the rain soak her and drip down her back as she blanks. Instead of following her original train of thought, she spits instead the first thing that comes to mind, her voice trembling with barely muted anger, not caring where it lands, or who it hurts.

“How someone like you raised someone like him, I’ll never know.”

Doctor Burrows seems more stunned than ever before. His brows take a journey all their own as his eyes study her face, trying to fathom the way he’s just been spoken to- Until he shakes his head, staggered. “Well I never- You- You can’t speak to me like that! Who do you think you- What do you think this is?” He exclaims, going to step past her towards Will’s tent; Elliott shoves him again, sending him staggering back, and that seems to snap him out of his daze. He stares at her, dumbstruck.

“Go put your stupid pots away by yourself, before I use them for target practice next time you’re out.”

He gapes at her.

“Y-You’d never waste the bullets,” he fumbles, one last attempt to salvage his dignity, and she lurches forward as though to strike him- He flinches away, and she unclenches the raised fist, taking a deep breath and trembling with barely suppressed rage.

“Go,” she says quietly, the kind of quiet that belies a threat, and she doesn’t have to ask a third time.

As he scurries back to his work, nearly tripping over his own feet, Elliott deflates. 

She feels cold now, suddenly, standing there soaking wet and reeling with the dregs of the adrenaline rush that had spurred her out of her cave, both literally and figuratively. She swallows, and glances back to Will’s tent, some feet behind her now; He has to be awake. Her throat feels tight, and she takes another deep breath, trying to be rid of the feeling as she takes a few tentative steps towards the tent.

“Will?” She hazards to the sound of silence in return, and rests a hand on the flap, hesitating a moment. Is disturbing him more than she already has done really her place? 

Is _any_ of this her place?

“I know you’re awake. I’m sorry,” she tries, biting her lips. “I… Probably shouldn’t have said those things, it was…”

It was what? Does she have an excuse? No. Her brows knit together and she frowns, swallowing. No. None of this is right, but for the wrong reasons. There is a long silence, in which her sentence goes unanswered. She grinds her teeth and glances back towards Burrows, scowling before looking back to the unresponding tent. 

“No. You know what, I’m not sorry. If you’re mad at me, then fine, but he’s been nothing but horrible to you since we got here. Since Smoking Jean! I’m not going to just- Let him treat you like that. So I’m sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not sorry. I don’t care.”

More silence, and her heart pounds heavy in her chest, beat so loud it could be a drum. She reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose- Lets out a frustrated groan, before steeling herself and pulling back the flap.

“Will, I-”

Whatever she had been expecting to find, it wasn’t this. A scowl, maybe, or dismissal, or anger, or even tears; But Will doesn’t give her any of those things. He doesn’t give her anything to work with, because he is _gone-_ She feels her heart lurch up into her throat so strong and hard she almost chokes.

He’s _gone_. Nauseous fear wraps it’s hands around her neck, and she bursts from the tent, moving faster than she thinks she ever has. She scoops her rifle from its place against the cave wall, and bowls into Doctor Burrows as she rushes past, sending him flying- There is the tinkling crack of damp, shattering pottery behind her as she rushes for the trees, in the one direction she imagines he would ever think to go. Doctor Burrows cries out behind her in indignant fury and confusion, and she doesn’t hear his words, but she knows there is fear there too, because there is fear written all over her face.

And if Elliott is afraid, there is something to be afraid of.

“What is it?” He shouts, barely audible over the rain- Elliott calls back, the malice in her voice forgotten, and it cracks in the rain. In the heat. In the wet. 

 _It’s Will_ , her head screams, over and over again, and she knows she’s shouting it too, for the way it tears at her throat. A crash of thunder drowns her next words, but they ring in her head like a concussion inescapable, over, and over, and over.

He’s gone. He’s gone.

_He’s gone._

 

* * *

 

The rain feels like it should be boiling on her skin, with the white hot pain that boils under it. The fact it doesn’t sizzle is one of the only things that registers as she lays there, muscles taught and throat tight. She knows better than to scream again, but she also knows that Will and the halfbreed will be coming back. She knows her time to linger here is limited, and that there is a rifle with her name on it, the self same one she had elected not to shoot Elliott with so many moons ago. She knows because it’s what she herself would do. Even if Will hadn’t been strong enough to finish what she’d started, Elliott will be. There’s a begrudging respect that comes with that knowledge, and Rebecca hates it. She had worked for her right to this life. Elliott had run, only standing her ground and embracing her heritage when it suited her- And here they are. Equals. 

No. 

Not equals, she thinks. She’ll show her. She’ll settle that misunderstanding permanently.

She doesn’t know how long she lays there, grasping her side, struggling for deep breaths. But she holds on to the righteous anger- It’s easy to shape, and it doesn’t care about her rasping for air, or the way ashen dust had stung tears to sunken eyes before she’d shut them. But time fades and dissolves into gray as she lays there, and the pain ebbs as she slowly becomes aware of the cold seeping into her from the wet ground beneath. From her soaked clothes, and skin. Not soaked with blood- That is an improvement, and she lays there until the rain stops. Until the sun returns. Its warmth tickles damp skin, and she finds it within herself to roll over, to slowly drag herself to her feet, caked in ash.

_You have never been easy prey. You will not start now._

Of course she won’t. It’s the thought of Will and Elliott finding her this way that had finally stirred the twin to action. She thinks of Imago, choking to death on his own throat in a backwater pub Topsoil, and resolves herself to more. There is a better fate for her somewhere, not here, stranded by her own ghosts and shot like a dog being put out of its misery. 

As she staggers up, Rebecca One lifts a hand to gently prod her jaw, wincing when she finds tenderness and swelling. There’s nowhere to examine her appearance, but she’s sure she’s a picture of violence right now. Will had made sure of that, but there’s not a question in her mind he had come away worse for wear than she is. Small victories. She wipes ash from her face and spits the copper taste from her mouth, running her tongue over her teeth to ensure they’re all intact as she slowly works her way over to the remains of their shelter, horribly warped by fire.

Her sister’s laughter rings in her ears, suddenly, and she closes her eyes, dizzied. A hand reaches out to steady herself against the structure- Nausea tugs at her stomach, and she counters it with a deep breath in of sharp, clean air, the kind of air that can only ever linger after a storm. It smells like wet leaves. 

She is eleven, and she is in the Citadel, but the scent lingers in her throat, not yet drowned out by the dry, hospital-like sterility of the place. She is only slightly damp from the rain, and she smooths out her skirts- She will be out of them soon anyway regardless, so it doesn’t matter. These are concessions, and she makes them for her sister. For her other half. They’ll see each other soon; Her stomach flutters at the thought.

The Burrows family is stupid, she thinks, to not know the differences when the differences are everywhere. Rebecca Two is waiting for her when she steps off the elevator, in well-pressed Limiter’s fatigues, and while she takes comfort in their sameness, she revels in their differences as well. Rebecca Two’s ponytail is slightly shorter, situated higher on her head; Her skin is paler, for lack of sun the past month, and her eyes are almost red-black, acclimated to the darkness. They spark when she lays them on her sister, and something radiant leaps in Rebecca One’s chest at the recognition. 

Home.

The door of the shelter warped shelter is a struggle to open. She bashes it in with a shoulder, over and over until it gives way, and knows she will be more sore for it.

The rain hadn’t reached here, but it is still damp. The twin crouches and brushes a fingertip over the rudimentary slab of metal on the floor that had served her as a desk, where she and her sister had drawn up plans and made vague attempts at cartography. It was a way to pass the time more than anything, a coping mechanism for the both of them that she realizes now was completely defunct. Brushing away the ash, the mostly ruined notebook pages she finds are incomprehensible and useless- Having seen the garden from what felt like the top of the world, albeit between bouts of unconsciousness brought on by blood loss and heat-induced delirium, she knows their estimates of distance and certain landmarks are all wrong. 

Still, she worries her split bottom lip, sucking blood into her mouth and narrowing her eyes; She wonders if, with a rudimentary map like this, someone as brain dead as Will could find the camp they had made for themselves after the attack. 

Areas they had been eyeing before the day that had changed everything are marked- Rebecca Two lifts the paper almost gently, staring it down for a long moment before tearing it, and all the memories with it, in two. Four. Six.

She scatters the shreds to the floor, brow twitching as she watches them kick up ash.

“Today is supposed to be important,” her sister says, lifting her chin somewhat proudly as she struts on ahead through the Citadel halls. Keeping up with her sister has never proved difficult, though she’s watched some Limiters and even some members of the Panoply fall behind. Rebecca Two moves quickly; Over the years, Rebecca One has come to live for that briskness. “Father told me we’ll be working with the Dark Light. Finally. I don’t know why we haven’t already, when we’ve been looking after idiot drones practically buzzing with it for the past eight years.”

She feels her own lips twitch in a smile as she regards Rebecca Two slyly. “Father shouldn’t have told you anything,” she says, “considering that you can’t keep your mouth shut.” Before her sister can protest, she is continuing, eyes flicking down to that contrary mouth before back to her indignant gaze. “But I’m glad he did. I much prefer to know what to expect on days like this.”

Rebecca Two seems to relax, narrowing her eyes before rolling them and turning the corner. The transition between the Citadel and the Garrison along the proper channels is a seamless one, but Rebecca One can distinguish it by the smell of the air, and the weight of the atmosphere. It’s heavy, but freeing- The suffering here isn’t theirs, and it is all well earned. Rebecca Two hesitates before the door, and it falls to her sister to take the lead.

“Come on,” she says, and lifts a brow, well trimmed and maintained and brushing her hairline in its amusement. Her lips are drawn in a barely there smirk as she brushes her hand along the door handle, their Limiter escort stopping just short of the societal portcullis. Rebecca One can’t imagine why now, of all times and of all places, Rebecca Two is dragging her feet. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

What a question. What a time for it to be asked. Rebecca One kicks some more ash over the scattered remnants of their pitiful attempts at a map with a sharp breath out and turns her attention to her real goal, the coat and belt laying draped over what remains of where they had slept. Even here, they had shared everything; There was some comfort to it, after so long spent separated with the sole purpose of doting on Will and his idiot excuse for a family. The coat is too burned to be useful- She tosses it aside, jaw tight with anticipation as her gaze falls on the utility belt, and the matte black holster it is threaded through.

Airtight. Waterproof. Fireproof. All terrain. 

She closes her eyes and exhales her praise for the preparedness of her Limiters and her people as she clicks free the locking mechanism, and slides the handgun from its cage.

“Where do you feel it?”

Rebecca One swallows down bile, clenching her jaw and closing her eyes as she does her best not to resist the pulsing, droning resonance that lingers in her. She is dripping with sweat; It is stinging her eyes, and she knows there is no point opening them. She can’t see anyway. “My throat-” she rasps out, nails digging into the wooden arms of the chair beneath her, before letting out a hiccupping sound as it shifts. “N-No. My head. My head now.”

“Good. Let’s take it lower. Slow, now.”

She recognizes Vane’s voice, and wonders if Alex is here as well. She has always gotten along better with the slightly older twin, but she doubts that would matter as she feels the sharp, spiking ball of pressure trail down her neck- For a moment it feels as though it is ripping free of her, and her back arches in discomfort, toes curling to dig into the soles of her boots with a pant before it eases back into her. She feels salt burn her eyes, and grits her teeth, breathing slow and deep through her nose in an attempt to calm her panicking body. The nausea is worse.

“Now?”

“My stomach,” she answers slowly, chest tight for the pulsing discomfort in her innards. She is the obedient one- She has always followed orders more adequately, _to the letter_ , their father would say. A willing subject is easier than one that is afraid and resistant, Vane had explained calmly as she slipped the restraints around her wrists.

But Rebecca One _is_ afraid. As she opens her eyes and sees nothing but darkness, a heat flash that threatens to make her wretch washes over her, and she shuts them again, steeling herself and lifting her chin like her sister had in the hall.

“Easy. Easy.”

“Sorry.”

She hears her sister’s voice, and the click of a dial. As the discomfort lessens, she pants, and chooses to focus on that. She knows it will be her turn once she has recovered, and somehow, that fills her with even more dread. The thought of doing this to her other half is the cold to her hot- The sick to her calm, which had begun to creep back for just a moment at the sound of Rebecca Two’s voice.

Suddenly, the room is still. The ball is still. She feels in that moment so intimately seen that the urge to fight wells up in her like something violent and untamed. Distantly, she hears Vane tut. Disappointment. She doesn’t know what she’s said out loud.

“That’s enough for today.”

The sensation stops, and light returns to the room with the click of machinery. Rebecca One slouches and blinks rapidly, heart pounding faster in her chest than it ever has. Her eyes seek her sister as Vane’s deft hands pluck her free of the restraints, and she rubs her wrists shakily, but from across the room, it isn’t the eyes she knows that meet her searching gaze. Rebecca Two looks at her differently, looks at her shell shocked, and as she rises to her feet to shakily make her way out of the room with the other, they don’t speak. She wants to ask, but doesn’t.

It’s a wonder she holds back the vomit until they are utterly alone. Rebecca Two holds her hair back until she is finished, and they sit together on the bottom of their bunk, talking well into the night. When they are not, they sit in silence- But it is a quiet, companionable one. More so than they have been before, she thinks.

Rebecca Two never tells her what the Dark Light had made her say. When she is thirteen, hurtling over the edge of the Pore with her sister and the vials and the corpse of Sarah Jerome to what she thinks is her death, she wishes she had asked.

The pistol clicks as she pulls back the slide, and she laughs weakly as a bullet enters the chamber, the sound giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. She wouldn’t know; Roger and Cecilia had never bothered.

As Rebecca rises to her feet, she returns the pistol to its holster, clicking the safety into place and pulling her hair up into a ponytail with a stray band from the belt.

She had come in weakness, she thinks as she steps over the corpse of the Limiter, careful not to beat over her own tracks on the way back to camp; She had come here for closure.

What a stupid, hollow concept, and how poetic to leave with a solution instead.

With control.

 

She smiles, a spring in her step.


	9. Part 9: Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where I tease you with the first serious hints of the ship tag on this baby.

“Knowing Elliott, we have about three hours before she’s here- Give or take the variable of their camp’s distance from our original camp.” 

Rebecca Two is pacing a line into the dirt, the conclusion of her thoughts accompanied by the click of the pistol as her sister finishes reassembling it. One semi-auto, two spare but empty magazines, and sixteen bullets total. She had been counting by the sounds as Rebecca One worked. “So that leaves us at most three hours to make our move. At the least, two and a half. I’d like to be long gone before Will and the halfbreed get here, because they  _ will _ get here. And they’ll be packing heat.” Her sister’s voice is eerily calm as she finishes Rebecca One’s thought aloud, watching her sister load the gun.

When her sister had returned to the camp, beaten and bruised, it had been her first instinct to fly off the handle; To demand to know where she had been, what she had done, who had  _ done  _ this to her- But all at once, she had  _ known _ . Will, or Elliott. 

It was only _ ever  _ Will or Elliott. 

As swiftly as it had come, the anger had dissipated, replaced with an eagerly simmering anticipation. Even now, her mouth waters with the promise of revenge.

“If we strike out now, we can beat them to the old shelter.”

Rebecca One’s words startle her from her fantasizing, and Rebecca Two stops her pacing, sparing her sister a glance. “That’s true. But we could run into them- And on uneven ground. It’s not worth risking the confrontation when it’s in our favor to force it instead. Don’t leave them a choice- Flush them out into our hands, rather than enabling another stumbling brawl.”

The last few words are a jab at her, but Rebecca One takes them in stride, unflinching as she offers her sister the pistol to inspect. She had deserved that. “Yes. My thoughts exactly,” she echoes before continuing. “So how do we do that?”

It’s a rhetorical question, posed to the open air, and her twin accepts the weapon, lifting it up to eye level and inspecting the slide and trigger. Rebecca Two clicks satisfaction in the back of her throat, much to One’s pleasure, before turning the gun over in her hand. There is silence between them- One accepts the pistol and checks the safety before holstering it at the belt around her waist. The belt is heavy, but it’s the kind of weight she is accustomed to- If anything, it is comforting.  _ Control _ .

The pair prepare in silence. There is an unspoken agreement to pack up what signs of life they can. The less conspicuous, the better- And there is weakness to be found in certain signs, like the lone makeshift bedroll they had shared, or Rebecca One’s various walking sticks. The less weakness, the better. Elliott will be hunting them like wounded prey, after all.

Rebecca Two pauses on that thought. “The stakes don’t suit us,” she realizes aloud, and feels her sister’s gaze snap to her more than sees it. Rebecca One’s eyes are boring holes into the back of her head.

“Never stopped us.” She remarks, her voice terse.

“No,” Rebecca Two agrees, before getting to her feet. “But we’re in a unique place right now. They hold the cards, save the element of surprise- The shoe’s on the other foot for once, and they know that.” There is a pause, and her voice is taking on a fervor as she begins to pace again, Rebecca One narrowing her eyes and lifting a brow. 

“So?”

“So it doesn’t have to be!” She exclaims, as though having a breakthrough. There is something sinisterly delighted in her tone as she continues, gesturing vaguely with her hands as she paces. “We move the goalpost. We change the stakes. Leave them no choice, and let them come to us, on our terms. They can find us, but it doesn’t have to be where they expect. Throw them off their rhythm by giving them what they want in a way they don’t want it. Now  _ we _ have the advantage.”

Rebecca Two’s eyes are bright with the same wild, barely restrained excitement they had been when shown Dominion for the very first time. Rebecca One feels a fondness, holds it tight, and tucks it deep in her chest, for no one- Not even her sister- To see. She grins nonetheless, that same excitement reflected in her eyes, albeit muted; She has always kept these things close. Their conversation melding with the sounds of the jungle, the twin rises to her feet, caring in that moment nothing for the twinge in her side.

“I’m listening.”

 

* * *

 

“I think she’s hurt. One of them- The one I shot.”

Will’s voice is still raspy, hoarse from the pain of a wrought iron grip around his neck like a hangman’s noose. Finding him had been no easy task- But now Elliott holds a canteen of lukewarm water to his lips, and he drinks deeply, a trembling hand streaked with blood grasping at her wrist to help hold himself steady. He isn’t too worse for wear, save his neck injuries- But Elliott tells him they are serious all on their own, and he is in no place to doubt her. She listens raptly as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and adjusts against the tree, wincing a bit with the motion.

“She collapsed. Like she was in agony, I didn’t think about it- I just ran.”

“Was she armed?” Elliott asks sternly as she caps the canteen and returns it to her belt, supporting her crouch with a heavy lean on her rifle, held in one hand. He has a feeling that he will have to reckon with her anger some other time- For now there are more pressing matters, and he doesn’t have to think about her question for more than a moment. 

“No,” he answers as he breathes out, head pounding. “No, I don’t think she was. I wouldn’t be alive, she… She had me.”

_ Of course she had you, _ Elliott’s head screams as she looks at him, jaw tight.  _ Of course she had you. She’s a trained killer, and you’re still deciding what it should mean to be Will. _ But she cannot be angry, try as she might. “Thank god,” she breathes instead, and bites her bottom lip, warring with other thoughts as she looks at him. His neck isn’t bruising, which is good- But she knows the damage can run far deeper than that. There’s nothing she can do but wait. If she had survived Tom Cox, she has to hope Will can survive the twins. She doubts he knows the danger isn’t over, and she decides it is probably kinder he doesn’t. If she is staring, she doesn’t notice.

“So… What now?” He croaks at her, uncomfortable under her prolonged gaze, and shifts again against the tree as he glances to her rifle. She is roused from her silent thoughts.

“Now we finish it,” she replies, her eyes snapping up from the claw marks on his neck to his face. “If the twin you shot survived, both did. And if both survived, they’ll be coming to finish what we started. They’ll know we’re coming- They’ll have something waiting for us, but we have an advantage they don’t.”

Elliott’s grip tightens around her rifle. Will feels his stomach fall out of his chest, dropping into the ground beneath him. “Shoot them?” He rasps, throat tightening like Rebecca’s hands are clamping down on it all over again.

“Properly, this time,” Elliott replies calmly, wetting her lips. “I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but I’ve shot people who deserved it less.”

Those words sound alien coming out of her mouth, and Elliott wishes she could suck them back in- But Will is staring at her like she is someone else in that moment, or perhaps through her; Too much has happened in the last few hours for him to parse. The part of his mind that processes complexities has shut off in favor of the part that has kept him alive this long; He blinks a few times, voice raspy for an entirely different reason as he speaks.

“You’ll do it? Not me. I don’t think I can. It was bad enough the first time, I- Seeing them like that. Playing. Their lives before they had to look after me, I- I ruin everything. I kill everything I touch. There isn’t a family in the world that’s survived contact with me, I-“

She shakes him. Will startles out of it, and shoves her hands away, fighting back and noticing only now that he is shaking- She overpowers him easily, and her grasp is firm enough to make him gasp in pain as she squeezes, forcing him back to his senses. At least enough to stop babbling.

“Will, stop. None of that is true. I’ll do it,” she says sharp as a whip crack, and he gasps raggedly, nodding and staring at her with the eyes of a cornered animal. “I’ll do it,” she repeats. “I’ll do it, but I need you to back me up. We can’t let them get away again.”

He nods slowly, swallowing and wincing as the movement makes his throat scream in protest. He takes a deep breath too, smoothing his shaking hands down his legs and rubbing at scraped knees. Can’t let them get away. Can’t let either of them get away. He is still nauseous.

“Do I have to see it?” He asks hoarsely, the pain of his torn up knees keeping him well grounded. His toes curl. Elliott stares at him.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she admits at last, getting to her feet. “Can you stand?”

Will nods numbly, taking a few deep breaths. His throat protests the feeling, but his lungs are relieved, the gulps of air bringing tears to his eyes for more reason than one. He reaches up to brush them away as he stands, only limping ever so slightly, and reaches up to touch his throat- Elliott gently stops him, squeezing his hand tight and bringing it back down to his side.

“Don’t do that,” she says, and when he stares at her blankly, she continues. “It’s already dirty. If we don’t clean it first… You know?”

Will does know. He nods and swallows, the pain of the motion bringing more tears to his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them; Keeps them low, momentarily transfixed by their hands locked together. Elliott hasn’t let him go, and he thinks it must be a mistake, or an oversight.

She squeezes gently; Her thumb brushes over bruised knuckles. His eyes snap up, his heart stuttering.

“Hey,” she says, and her tone is softer now. “Look at me. Don’t worry- We got this.”

He does look. He looks and he sees Elliott, for the first time in a long time, the Elliott he had met months ago. Her skin is darker now he thinks, but the steel in her eyes matches the polish of the rifle in her hand. 

In the other, she holds his heart. He hopes she knows that.

“Alright,” he says at last, and takes a deep breath, squeezing back. He can do this. He’s done it before, they’ve done it before; He can do it one more time. He has to.

She doesn’t let go as she leads him out into the jungle, back to where they’d started. Back to where  _ all _ of this had started. Will keeps her hand, keeps its callouses and scars; She keeps his, shaking less and less with every step, and decides she is done pretending she doesn’t want it.

In the other, he holds her heart.

 

When all of this is over, she thinks, she’ll make sure that he knows. 


	10. Part 10: Burrows

His mind is quieter than he thought it would be.

One foot in front of the other, Will is almost startled by the silence, when he catches it. No words are spoken between he and Elliott, and where there is space for thoughts that normally torment him, there is quiet. She holds his hand until terrain forces her to do otherwise; When she shifts her weight and slips in front of him, he falls in behind her, single file. She moves like a cat, Will thinks, and is careful that his own feet land in the small hollows hers leave behind.

The balls of her feet land on the wet jungle ground before her heels do. She had explained it once to him in depth, but now that it is second nature, he can only think of it as tiptoeing.

The thought strikes him funny. Deliriously so. Elliott has to reach behind her and rap him lightly in the ribs to shut up his snickering, the less than friendly touch earning a wince from the injured boy. In the absence of his own thoughts, Will wonders what Chester might think of that, and feels his mouth dry.

The twins. Chester. Elliott. Cal, and Drake… His father, most recently. But who, of all of them, is really left? Who will be left by the time this is over?

He reaches up to swat a massive gnat away from his eye, and decides he prefers the silence. His wondering has brought about a reminder that sometimes, his thoughts are too loud to begin with.

Elliott lifts a hand up ahead, a silent call to halt that Will doesn’t need to hear in order to obey. He leans off to the side ever so slightly, trying to peer past her, and doesn’t have to struggle for long; She is lowering herself slowly in the brush, like a wildcat stalking, and he is inclined to do the same.

“What is it?” He asks quietly at last, to which she shushes him and points up ahead. At last, creeping forward together, he sees what she sees; A fire. Smoke. “Odd,” he says, and feels his throat constrict. Elliott doesn’t shush him for that. He’s saying what they’re both thinking.

_ They had to know we were coming. _

Elliott presses her lips together, Will shifting uncomfortably behind her in the tall brush. The twins had to know they were coming. Know  _ she _ was coming. But here is their camp, empty, fire still smoldering and traces of life everywhere.

It can’t be right.

“Spread out,” she says at last, her voice low and tight with nerves. “Take this and stay low. They could be waiting for us in the trees, or…” 

There’s an infinite list of things the twins could be doing. The fact Elliott is helpless to know with any certainty  _ what _ is not making her feel any better as she shoves the stove gun into Will’s hands. It’s the last of them, and his hands shake as he takes it; He opens his mouth as if to speak, but the words die on his tongue as he tightens his grip on the weapon. He knows what he has to do with it, if it comes to that. Despite everything, the bile rising in his throat is begging him to do otherwise. 

“I need you to circle the perimeter. Keep your eyes on me and I’ll do the same- If something is out of the ordinary, you know the signal. The less noise, the better. I’ll be on the lookout, I expect you to be too.”

“Of course,” he says, though it’s more of a croak. She fixes him with a stern look; The unspoken question of it lingers in the air, and he has to fight not to wince in reply. Is he ready, she asks with her eyes? He swallows, knowing the answer is no. 

But this has never been about what he wants; It has never been about what he is ready for.

Elliott is on the move now. Will watches her catlike movements with a distant gaze for a few moments before snapping out of his haze and turning his eyes to his own side of the bargain. There is nothing out of the ordinary in the underbrush directly in front of him, but Elliott has taught him what to look for when tracking animals. He had never wanted to put that knowledge to use hunting humans, and the mere thought of it makes him sick. He stares ahead. A little boy, white haired and grinning, beckons him eagerly on; Bleary eyes focus and unfocus, and he rubs them until they water, blinking away the sight.

“Elliott?”

His voice feels like it hasn’t been used in a decade, but it’s been mere minutes of searching before it breaks the silence. He stares down at two pairs of footprints in the mud leading away from the campsite, and for a moment he is back to that perfect day, the set up to that cosmic joke. The punchline is that he will be a murderer, whether he wants to be or not; Because he has no choice, because the alternative is death and Will does not want to die yet.

Does he?

“Elliott!”

His voice cracks with urgency as he raises it to make sure he was heard, and he can hear her now, getting closer, and fast. He had forgotten the signal- Silence is no matter if the twins aren’t here, and he knows now exactly where they are, in his gut, which feels like he is falling back into the Pore all over again. His stomach doesn’t stop falling when it hits his feet; Somehow, there is always further for it to fall. Absently, Will places his own foot into one of the prints as he waits for Elliott.

His boot dwarfs it, crushing it to leave his own mark. It’s so small.

“Oh, shit.”

Elliott skids to a stop beside him, panting with nerves from crossing such distance in so short a time with such urgency; Her voice is breathy. Her eyes, too, have fallen on the prints, and Will lifts his foot, stepping back and taking a deep breath as he looks to her. 

“You don’t think they’re-”

“They have to be,” She replies, voice pitching in a tone Will can read as frantic; He knows because he’s only heard it once before. That day had ended with him plummeting into the unknown, tied to the corpse of his thirteen year old brother. He wonders who he will have to bury this time. Elliott’s pupils are dilated, like they’d been on that day; She begins to pace, tugging at her hair with one hand and holding her rifle in an iron grip with the other. Will can see her knuckles turn white as she all but cries out, turning to him with a face white enough to match.

“How could I be so  _ stupid! _ ”

 

* * *

 

“This is completely ridiculous!”

The crowing, exasperated voice of Doctor Burrows echoes in the small clearing, high pitched and indignant as it so often is. But the renewed press of pistol between his shoulders silences him if only for a moment, as does Rebecca One’s hiss of irritation; He has never taken that sound as seriously as he should, but something about the additional threat of a bullet in his back adds to its gravity. He clenches and unclenches his fists somewhat anxiously, taking a deep breath in and watching the other twin with darting eyes as she rifles carelessly through his lovingly amassed tent of artifacts. 

This is horrible, he thinks. Just horrible. Will he never have a moment to himself? Is this his fate then, to have his world altering research interrupted time and time again by moody, volatile, prepubescent girls? The presence of rifles and handguns makes it no more or less exhausting either way. Perhaps he can reason with them. There must be a reason for all of this. If that is the case, then there must be a way to stop it, so he can return to his work.

He clears his throat, which makes Rebecca One tighten her grasp on the pistol in her hand; He is about to pipe up when the other twin turns to him with a vindictive leer, pointedly letting the vase in her hands drop and shatter. He feels furious indignation rear up in his chest, eyes practically bulging out of his head at the sight, only to watch her  _ roll _ hers and turn back to her pilfering. He fumbles with syllables that may have been attempts at words for a moment in shock before he straightens up, a harsh scowl twisting up his features. Rebecca One takes note of the sudden change, but if he hears her almost pitying snort of derision, he shows no sign of it. 

She’s seen him take on this demeanor with disagreeable  _ burger joint _ employees; The concept that he believes it will have any effect on her or her sister is laughable.

“Rebecca, er- Whatever your name is- That’s enough!” he says sternly, in the most commandeering voice he can muster. When she shows no sign of having heard him, he grinds his teeth; Even with her back turned, Rebecca Two can practically hear the smoke coming out of his ears, and she has to bite both of her lips to keep the entirely involuntary chuckle that rises silent. It is one of complete amazement. She has come to the same realization as her sister — Is he trying to  _ food service _ her?

She lets the lack of reply stew for a moment before she hears him take a deep breath, furious. Rebecca One shifts her weight, rolling her head to crack her neck and closing her eyes as she exhales through her nose, seeking patience before opening them again to watch his continued sputtering.

“Did you hear me? I- I said that’s enough! Whatever you’re looking for, it isn’t here! I demand you stop right this instant, or I’ll- I’ll-”

It is then that Rebecca Two turns on him with all the ferocity of a whip crack, sneering; The movement is so sudden he actually startles, backing up into the barrel of the pistol still jabbed into his back. “Or you’ll what?” she demands, sharp, dark brows climbing high on her face as her expression takes on a hint of mocking incredulity. “Cry, maybe? Keep bitching my ears off, like a little school girl?”

Her language seems to startle him- He blinks, and as she takes a step towards him, he backs up instinctively, running into the firm body of Rebecca One. She scoffs and shoves him back forward, hard enough to make him stumble, and he rounds on her as if to protest, but the stern voice of Rebecca Two makes him about face once more, her suddenly cold tone demanding attention as the playfulness disappears. She hasn’t paused in her verbal stride, still speaking as she approaches slowly.

“Or maybe,” she begins as she finally comes to a stop in front of him; He swallows, feeling his heart leap into his chest when she leans in close despite the fact he has several heads of height on her. Her speech is measured and carries with it an air of false patience, like she is explaining something very, very simple to someone very, very stupid. “Just maybe, you’ll try to run away again, like you did in the Pore, and I’ll finally have an excuse to have my sister shoot you. How’s that for an interruption of your work?”

His face drains of color. Hers remains mere inches from it, still leaned in close, brows lifted as she awaits an answer. She tilts her head some like an impatient grade school professor before asking once more.

“Well?”

Doctor Burrows seems to return to the present, blinking, mouth moving without sound like a fish out of water. But finally he clears his throat, straightening back up and gathering what little dignity he has left as he glances to the side, deferring to her with furrowed brows. “I- Err- No. That- Ahem, that will be… Completely unnecessary. Thank you.”

“Thank you…?” she prompts, still uncomfortably close, and he swallows again.

“Thank you Rebecca,” he corrects, only to watch her narrow her eyes as she finally gives him back the luxury of his personal space by stepping away. She stares at him a moment more with that loathing gaze, though she seems to be trying to figure him out more than anything, and he withers under the scrutiny.

“That isn’t my name,” the twin says at last with utmost disdain, seemingly content to end the discussion with that as she returns to her searching. A piece of pottery wobbles as if about to fall when she brushes it with her foot by accident; He winces and grinds his teeth, but stays quiet, mind racing as his brows knit together in concern. 

Behind him, Rebecca One yawns, bored, before speaking up in a sharp series of clicks and rasps that make his ears twinge. “We’re running out of time,” she says patiently. “I hate to agree with the old fart, but I don’t think we’re going to find the virus in with all of this ancient crap- Elliott is too smart. She thinks like one of us.”

“Maybe,” Rebecca Two replies, peering into another odd vase before shaking its contents out into her hand before glancing to her sister- Nothing but sand and dust. “But if not here, where?”

“I don’t know. I wish we had Stalkers... If I were her I would have buried it, or-”

“I never got to know your name,” Doctor Burrows hazards to interrupt the unintelligible conversation, tenuous, and Rebecca One jabs the pistol into his back roughly, exasperated. He winces, adjusting so it stops digging into his spine, but continues speaking to the girl with her back turned, unusually earnest. “I mean it. We named you Rebecca… I mean, we named both of you Rebecca, I suppose. But then I found out you were Styx- The two of you were, or are. And I never asked.”

Rebecca Two tosses the pottery in her hand to the side dismissively; It topples into another pile of similar artifacts, shattering, and she doesn’t turn around to look at him. “How sweet. I didn’t imagine you cared,” she replies, her voice full of derision, but he seems to have given her pause. She brushes her dusty hands off on her relatively tattered fatigues, glancing over her shoulder towards him with no small amount of malice. 

Somehow, that hurts more than the gun to his back. He balks, fumbling with his words and frowning deeply, indignant in a way. “I… Of course I care. I know I may not have always been the best father to you, to the two of you… Do you have another father? I... Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head, oblivious to the way both twins bristle at the mention of another father- Rebecca Two cuts him off before he can continue.

“Not the best father?” she asks as she finally turns around. Her voice is as chilly as it is mocking as she continues. “I imagine you thought I enjoyed filing your taxes, then, or washing your disgusting clothing? Cooking poor little Will breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because mummy and daddy didn’t care? Is that it?”

The words are venomous, but detached. She has harbored them inside of her for her whole life. She watches as he blinks at her, clearly struggling with a response. It’s pitiful, really, and she shakes her head in unsurprised disappointment before lifting her chin off to one side briefly, signaling her sister and speaking in their sharp, grating tongue.

“Come on. We’re done here. Let's sweep the rest of this place, before the halfbreed and her pet idiot come barking up our tree.”

Rebecca One nods, turning Doctor Burrows around with a firm grip on his shoulder and a jab of the pistol- When he hesitates to move, unsure what is happening or where he is being ushered, the twin shoves him, and he is sent stumbling forward out of the tent. “Well I never-”

“Shut up,” Rebecca One snaps, her grip on the pistol going white for a moment before she takes a deep and calming breath. She can feel her sister’s eyes on her, surprised by the outburst, but she swallows, unimpeded otherwise. The fact Burrows has his back to her bolsters her confidence- He can’t see her uncertainty, can’t see the way she grinds her teeth before she speaks. There is a pause before she continues. “And we did have a father. Our only father. He’s dead now, so if you talk about him like that again, I’m going to get the dirt real well acquainted with the color of your brains. Got it?”

 

“Dad?”

 

The atmospheric shift is instant. Doctor Burrows yelps in pain as Rebecca One wrenches his arm behind his back, twisting it hard enough to bring him to his knees- He lets out a pant, and his blood runs cold as he hears something metallic click directly behind his head, right between his ears. 

_ The safety? _

“Dad!”

“No, not another step closer,” Rebecca One warns, her finger slipping onto the trigger of the pistol like an old friend, and Will freezes where he stands, wide eyes darting between the twins and his father- He looks to Elliott, whose rifle is already raised, leveled on Rebecca Two with all the intent of a firing squad- And the girl’s sister tuts, eyes narrowing as they meet the renegade’s. 

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. Unless you want to find out what’s faster, my sister’s trigger finger or your aim?”

Elliott grinds her teeth, glancing to Rebecca One. The Styx girl flashes her a dashing smile, but her eyes are glittering with poison as she lifts her brows, daring the other to try it. “That was quite the stunt you pulled back there at our old home away from home, Elliott,” she says, wetting her lips with her tongue before that wolfish grin returns. “I’m flattered you did all that for little old me- It’s too bad you can’t get anything right for the life of you. And you…”

Her eyes flick to Will, and the playfulness is gone. He looks shell-shocked, the stove gun in his hands hanging slack near his waist. When his gaze meets hers, he feels a chill, despair welling up somewhere deep inside him. A Cal-shaped hole, begging all of this to stop.

_ Not again. _

“...I hope shooting me was worth it, because I’m going to skin you like a grape when all of this is done. And don’t even think about lifting that stupid, homemade toaster of a gun towards either of us, or I’ll put daddy dearest in the dirt.”

“You  _ shot  _ her?!”

Doctor Burrows’ alarmed crow is ignored, Rebecca One glancing to her sister- Rebecca Two rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, watching Elliott intently with an air far removed from that of one who is being held at gunpoint.

“Actually, you know what? I want you to put that on the ground for me, Will. Nice and slow, or I’ll make good on that hell I promised you so long ago right now.” Rebecca One lifts her chin, clearly referring to his weapon, and Will moves to comply as if compelled by some outside force until Elliott barks at him.

“Will, don’t. Snap out of it- I need you here with me. I need you.” Her voice is a sharp, tense plea, though she’d only seen his movement out of the corner of her eye; She can’t afford to take her gaze off Rebecca Two, who grins at her tauntingly and lets her mouth fall open as she takes a deep breath in. She can practically taste the fear; from Will, from Elliott, even from the man on his knees in front of her sister.

“Aw,” she coos, still smiling. “What’s wrong, drain baby? Your boyfriend picking daddy over you? It’s okay. You know colonists… So unreliable. It’s sad, really.”

“Shut up. Will, look at me.”

He does, mouth dry and head spinning. Elliott looks like two of herself, but he blinks and the double is gone, Will dragging in a deep breath to steady himself. His heart is pounding a mile a minute. But Elliott’s eyes, for just a moment, dart to look at him- And he catches them like lightning to a tree, electrified clarity that buzzes through every nerve ending he has left.

“I need you,” she repeats urgently, and he understands. 

This isn’t about what he’s ready for. It isn’t about what he wants. He is nothing but  _ needs _ , bundled and not satiated, left aching for things far beyond his means- but not everything is out of reach. Elliott needs him. He needs his father to live. He needs to breathe- The next breath in makes his lungs cry out in protest, eyes finally awake as he looks to Rebecca One, expression sharp and eyes wild.

“What do you want from us?” He asks at last, and hears Elliott breathe relief.    


“Look who’s finally joined the party,” Rebecca One proclaims with a broad grin, wicked delight sparkling in her eyes. “I guess I did more of a number on you with that rock than I thought I did. Aren’t concussions fun, big bro?”

_ “Rock?!” _

Rebecca One rolls her eyes, ignoring the man on his knees and looking to Will- Suddenly all business as the playful facade drops. “As for what we want, that should be obvious- We want Dominion. You bring us the phials, we leave with daddy-o here, then we let him go once we’re a nice,  _ comfortable _ distance away. You can be one big happy family again- How does that sound?”

Will’s heart drops, and it isn’t Rebecca One’s leering tone that makes Elliott begin to laugh. Her shoulders shake silently for a moment before it becomes audible, and that is enough to give Rebecca One pause- The twin hesitates instead of continuing to speak to Will, glancing to the renegade with the earnest, displeased expression of someone caught genuinely off guard. It doesn’t last long before it shifts into a look of suspicion, and she shares a look with her sister.

“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” Rebecca Two says, narrowing her eyes as she watches Elliott continue to grin behind the scope of her rifle. “You should know by now that this is far from a joke. We sure have enough practice with it, between the four of us, and history isn’t exactly in your favor.” There’s no amusement in her tone as she speaks, tone flat and hostile.

Elliott shakes her head, and Will seems to wrestle with his words, the image of his father as he gapes silently, lips moving faintly but making no sound. 

“Enough! If you need a reminder of how this went last time, I don’t think Doctor Buckwheat here needs both of his legs,” Rebecca One snarls, moving the gun slightly without loosening her grip as if to emphasize. “I’m running out of patience. And I didn’t drag my ass halfway across the jungle to do stand up comedy. Do we have a deal or not?”

“You should tell her, Will,” Elliott says, still grinning- Rebecca One’s gaze snaps to the renegade, then back to Will, full of malice. “You deserve to be the one. Go on.”

There is a long silence as Will tries to find words, staring at Rebecca One helplessly.

“Will?” his father begins, and the crack of a gunshot splits the air, stopping him short. The warning shot makes everyone flinch except the guilty party, Rebecca One calmly regarding the cloud of dust kicked up in front of Doctor Burrows before fixing her eyes intently on Elliott, who has switched targets to her, her trigger finger so tight the twin is sure the slightest  _ twitch  _ would be enough. She exhales slowly, and lifts a brow, hearing her sister exhale beside her- Despite the momentary threat to her life, Rebecca Two is stoic, and she finds comfort in that.

“Good thing that was just a reminder- Reflexes a bit rusty since the last time we met, hm, halfbreed? Don’t worry. We can work on that together.” Rebecca One exhales and rolls her shoulders, putting on the display of loosening up for her captive audience as though after some great exertion. Her voice is calm and cold. “Now, for the last time-”

“Dominion is gone!” 

Will cries out at last, desperation pitching his voice as he cuts her off; His eyes haven’t left his father, knelt in the dirt with his hands over his ears. Even from here, he can see blood dripping down the trembling man’s wrist, and finally he lifts his gaze to Rebecca One. She looks like she’s been slapped, and while on a good day he may have found it satisfying, it is infinitely less so when she holds a rather large part of his world in her hands. 

“Dominion is gone,” He says again, more levelly this time, though his voice still shakes, and he is trembling. “It… We destroyed it, by accident. It’s gone. Please, just… Please, just let him go. I can’t do this again.”

It’s a rare feeling, having ice seep into her veins. Rebecca One does her best to regain her composure, but there is only so much she can do as she looks to her sister in stunned silence; Her mind is racing a mile a minute, and she clenches her jaw to shut her mouth when she realizes it’s fallen slightly agape. Rebecca Two stares back at her, giving the smallest shake of her head, and she knows then that her sister is just as uncertain; Just as stunned.

_ It’s up to you _ , those dark eyes seem to say as they look back at her.  _ I trust you. _

Rebecca One swallows harshly as the coldness in her veins turns into something familiar. Something that takes the weight off her heart for a moment, laughter bubbling up in a maddening cadence and slipping from her lips as they pull back in a grin. “Bullshit,” she barks out on a laugh as she looks to Will with wild eyes, taking a deep breath and stifling another manic giggle. It wracks her chest instead of becoming audible, shaking her shoulders, and she exhales sharply, shaking her head as her calm seems to return to her, for the most part. “Bullshit,” she says again. “I’ll believe that when I see it. Do you really think I’m that stupid? I-”

“If I show you, will you please just let him go?” Will interrupts, voice exhausted and pleading. “I’ll show you. I’ll go get the phials. Will you please, just…”

“Will,” Elliott says warningly, looking between the twins, who look between each other. 

Rebecca Two nods slowly, after some hesitation, and Rebecca One sets her jaw as she glances back to Will. “Yes,” she says at last, looking back to Elliott, and then to her sister. “But if this is a waste of our time or some kind of trick, it’s his neck.”

She nudges Doctor Burrows with the pistol, and he flinches with his whole body, breathing out a whine. No scolding now, or woeful attempts at apology for his pitiful excuse for fathering- That makes her feel strong, and Rebecca One continues, seeming to regain her confidence with every word. She is back to her intolerable, well-earned air of arrogance in no time, and she straightens her shirt with her free hand as she continues.

“Right… So here’s how this’ll go. You give me that stupid one-shot toaster oven so I don’t have to worry about any funny business once you’re out of my sight. I’ve seen what those things do to Limiters.” Elliott opens her mouth to protest, but Rebecca One lifts a finger. “Ah, ah. No buts. That’s the deal, or there’s no deal. Stove gun to my sister, Will. I’ll give you an hour to go get the phials from wherever they are. You give the phials to her, she gives you the gun, we take daddy dear like we discussed, and we all go our separate merry ways. Got it?”

Will hesitates for only a moment before he nods, heart pounding out of his chest. Elliott watches helplessly as he crosses the divide, pressing the stove gun into Rebecca Two’s hands- She takes it as if accepting something particularly dirty or unpalatable, making a bit of a face and letting it hang loosely in her grip, but accepting it nonetheless. Elliott curses under her breath as the twin adjusts her grip in a way that shows she’s familiar enough with the firing mechanism to get a shot off, and Rebecca Two grins at her. The renegade half expects another gunshot, and has already decided what to do if that’s the case- But it never comes. Will returns to her side of the clearing unimpeded, and she meets his gaze intently.

“You’ve got this,” she mutters, for only him to hear- It isn’t the truth. Elliott knows that. The twins could kill her- She would never be able to take both of them out in time. They could kill Will when he returns with the broken phials. They could do a million things, but weighed against the knowledge that they are trapped in this place and the virus is gone, none of that isn’t worth risking the chance of one less life lost. Her eyes fall on Doctor Burrows, still cowering in the dirt, and she feels her stomach churn with disdain- But it isn’t her decision to make. Isn’t her stake. Her father is dead, and not for the first time, she is glad.

Still bloodied and exhausted, Will smiles wearily and shrugs.

“We’ll see,” he replies. 

 

And then he is gone, leaving nothing but a silent dread in his wake. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double-whammy today, folks, I was just feelin' it. Apologies for the cliffhanger, but that's one of life's simple delights as an author of any kind, no?


	11. Part 11: Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one this time, but with a major turning point for the plot that will bring us into the second act. **The content warnings on this story have been updated in the tags- Please heed them before jumping into this chapter and the one to follow.**

The crack of the gunshot he expects to hear when he turns his back never comes, but that doesn’t make the experience of offering himself up to the executioner by doing so any less terrifying. 

Leaving himself exposed and defenseless against the twins is the most viscerally uncomfortable thing he thinks he has ever experienced, the way his instincts fight him reminding him acutely of the nauseous, spindly pain brought on by the Dark Light. There is nothing so wrong as turning your back on a predator; He is reminded once again of the brief hunting lessons Elliott had offered him, in the month of peace they had experienced before everything had gone so painfully wrong. When you stand your ground, you are afforded the luxury of seeing death coming, and the chance to fight it tooth and nail.

Turning tail to run is a death sentence.

The fact he isn’t  _ really _ running is his only comfort as he leaves the clearing, one foot in front of the other. He’ll come back, one step at a time, just like he is leaving; Adrenaline courses through his veins like ice for not the first time in the last twenty-four hours, leaving his limbs shaking. When was the last time he ate? Drank? He can remember Elliott bringing her canteen to his lips, swallowing it down, water cool in comparison to the burning rasp of his throat. He had been so shell-shocked that his mind was silent- His rasping breaths and Elliott’s concerned voice had been the only sound.

His mind isn’t silent now. Will is hyper-aware that every last one of his thoughts are distractions as his legs take him back along the well beaten path to the cairns, but he is past caring. If anything, there is some twisted relief curling in his gut- He is finally marching his way towards a cause that doesn’t end in death. He swallows hard at the thought, and regrets it instantly, his aching throat screaming its protest- But he has to remind himself that if this all pans out, the memory of Rebecca One’s hands wrapped around his throat with the intent to kill is one he will never have to relive.

It will be over, and they will finally be free of each other.

His eyes fall on Cal’s cairn as he enters the clearing by the stream, and he can’t help but swallow again, feeling short of breath. The sight of it makes his ears ring with the sound of booming artillery on a good day, but now? The sight is almost dizzying. He glances back, staring over his shoulder for a long moment- He is still expecting gunshots. Anticipation and fear are a toxic mix, swirling in his gut and twisting sharply every time he remembers Elliott standing her ground against the twins alone, in a place that had only just started to feel like home. 

He’s starting to believe such places are incapable of lasting.

His feet are heavy as he makes his way to the lone rock that marks all that remains of Dominion, and thinks for not the first time that he is tired of digging up graves.

 

* * *

 

“Your boyfriend sure is taking his time, Renegade. Sure he didn’t just up and leave, every man for himself?  That would be fun. I’d get to polish off you  _ and _ Doctor Buckwheat here.”

Rebecca One’s needling voice is like nails on a chalkboard, but Elliott doesn’t rise to the bait. The three girls are statuesque, save for Rebecca Two occasionally fidgeting with the stove gun; She is watching Elliott out of the corner of her eye for any sudden movements, but waiting has never been her strong suit. She doesn’t revel in this quite as much as her twin, who is speaking again.

“I bet you thought you were clever back there, with that little light show. But why not just kill us the old fashioned way, hm? Worried you’d miss?”

“You should try looking down the barrel,” Elliott suggests in response, ignoring Rebecca One and addressing Two as she watches her examine the trigger of the improvised weapon. “Some real fascinating stuff down there, so long as you don’t slip.”

Rebecca Two scowls briefly before her expression shifts back to apathetic indifference, and she ceases her fidgeting as she fixes Elliott with a sharp look. “I’ve heard Coprolites make cracks more clever, but that’s a solid ‘A’ for effort. I’ll give you a pass, since there’s a pretty good chance I get to blow your brains out in half an hour.”

“You don’t even have a watch,” Elliott retorts dismissively, watching Rebecca Two now. She can still feel One’s eyes drilling into her skull from the side- Her gaze is like a burning heat, but she ignores it. “While we’re all here, I’ve got a few questions.”

“You’re not the one asking questions,” Rebecca One replies immediately, and the sharpness of her voice makes Doctor Burrows flinch. She peers down at him disdainfully before her eyes return to Elliott. “And we’re not here to talk to you anyway.”

Elliott’s brows lift sarcastically. “Could have fooled me with the way you’re running your mouth. You just can’t resist, can you? You Styx always have to rub it in when you think you have the upper hand.”

“It’s an inherited trait,” Rebecca One replies with an air of boredom, examining the nails on her free hand and scraping dirt out from beneath one with her thumb before looking back at Elliott. “You should know- You always seem to revel in it when it’s your turn. That’s  _ very _ Styx of you.”

Elliott’s mouth is opening to retort when Doctor Burrows finds his voice, the sound of his throat clearing cutting her off. He is still on his knees at Rebecca One’s feet, but his hands are knit together behind his head now. “My arms are getting sore,” he protests weakly, but the way he says it, it’s more of a plea- Rebecca One rolls her eyes and looks down at him again.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some bigshot archaeologist? You can’t even hold your own arms over your head for an hour without getting tired?”

He lets out a huff, sounding weary. “I think you’ve vastly misunderstood my job description. May I please just lower my arms?”

She shares a glance with her sister, before letting out an irritated hiss and fixing her eyes on him once more. “Fine. But keep them at your sides. No funny business or else- You’re only alive because Will wouldn’t cooperate otherwise.”

“As you’ve made abundantly clear,” he replies somewhat dryly as he lowers his arms, rolling his shoulders and letting out another little huff of breath before looking to Elliott. “This is all so unnecessary. If this virus, this- This  _ pathogen  _ is actually gone, surely we can all lower our weapons and wait this out like civilized people? Will should be back soon with the proof you need, and then we can all be on our way.”

“Right,” Rebecca One replies, sounding somewhat impatient, “save that I don’t believe it is, and the fact there isn’t a soul in this clearing aside from you who doesn’t want us dead. If I lowered this weapon, it’d be my head, isn’t that right, Elliott?” She grins almost coyly over at the Renegade before looking down to Doctor Burrows, her voice turning cold. “Besides, we’ve got a few deaths to pay forward. Elliott here’s knocked a few of our friends, and we can’t let that go unpunished, either.”

Doctor Burrows stares up at Elliott, aghast. “Is that true?”

“If you count those soulless killing machines they pass as soldiers, I’ve killed plenty,” Elliott retorts, adjusting her grip on her rifle, and Rebecca One’s eyes seem to flash maliciously- The sudden shift in her expression sets the Renegade on edge all on its own, feeling as though she’s stumbled into some kind of trap.

“Like your father?”

“I wasn’t aware you were personally acquainted with every Limiter that’s ever tried to collect my hide. My condolences on your immeasurable loss.” The twin’s words have settled in the pit of her stomach, and Elliott tries not to let it show as best she can. The reply comes as if she’d not even heard them, but it’s too little, too late - Rebecca One smells blood, and the Styx girl can’t ignore the rush of power as she digs her claws into the open wound.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure  _ you  _ didn’t kill him- Disloyal members of our warrior class tend to be dealt with by the top brass, unless they correct their mistakes. And since you’re standing here…”

Elliott grinds her teeth, grip tightening on her rifle- Rebecca Two grins over at her sister, piling on with relish in her voice. 

“I’m sure it was painful- You said it yourself, we just can’t help it. It’s in our nature. And for a crime like that...”

“I never knew him,” Elliott replies sharply, glancing to Rebecca Two as if to silence her with the words- As if they’re a period at the end of the sentence, but Rebecca One isn’t done. She laughs, a cruel, delighted sound like a hyena’s bark- And when she smiles, the expression is all teeth. She tuts, then, shaking her head with a sickeningly fake expression of pity.

“Poor little Elliott, growing up without a father. That must have been hard… No one to protect her when people started noticing she was different. No one to protect poor mummy, either… Is that how you ended up in the Deeps? Sick of being a burden? An  _ embarrassment? _ ”

Elliott snarls then, snapping her sights from Rebecca Two to Rebecca One- The twin stares down the barrel of the other’s rifle with an air of indifference. “I wouldn’t if I were you, unless you want your little boyfriend to come back to a bloodbath. Imagine doing that to him again… Making him bury another family member.”

The renegade glances to Rebecca Two, to the stove gun leveled at her chest, and hesitates for a moment before she deflates, exhaling sharply and grinding her teeth before she takes a deep, long breath. Her shoulders relax as she all but forces them to.

For not the first time that day, Rebecca One feels strong.

“Will!”

Doctor Burrows’ crowing cuts through the tension with all the grace of a butterknife- Even Rebecca One jumps, torn from the intense staring match and redirecting her gaze to Will as he crashes his way gracelessly into the clearing. Elliott takes her finger off the trigger, not quite turning to face him, but watching him out of the corner of her eye nonetheless. He has something dirty and gray in hand, and as he comes to a stop beside Elliott, he notices her obvious stress- But as he opens his mouth to speak, Rebecca One raises her voice.

“That’s enough. You two idiots can catch up later- This has been fun, but I’m sick of waiting. Now throw my sister the virus, or the deal’s off.”

Will glances to Elliott, who shrugs- Then he glances over to the twins. “You put my gun down first. Then we’ll swap,” he says firmly, and Rebecca Two seems to have a silent exchange with her sister before nodding and tossing the weapon aside. It kicks up a cloud of dust as it lands- The ground has begun to recover from the monsoon earlier, drying back into something hard and unyielding and strong. Rebecca One swallows, mouth dry with anticipation and heart beginning to pound.

As Will throws the gray blob through the air underhand to her, Rebecca Two realizes what it is a moment too late- But she catches it anyway, unwilling to risk letting potentially intact phials shatter, and shudders as she holds the filthy sock far away from herself.

“There,” Will breathes raggedly, his own heart pounding out of his chest as he watches the twin tear the fabric open with ease. “Now…. Let my dad go.” 

He is party, too, to watching the girl’s face fall- But Elliott’s eyes are fixed on Rebecca One, who is watching her sister like air to the drowned.

“Well?” the armed twin asks of her sister, and Rebecca Two looks as though she might be ill- It should feel like triumph, Elliott thinks, to see her that way, but it doesn’t.

Rebecca One peers into the sock for a long moment, not seeming to breathe, and then she leans back. Elliott thinks for a moment she might collapse as she sways, but she recovers, shaking her head briskly as if to shake off a fly, or a thought. She blinks down at the pistol in her hand, brows twitching and knitting together, face white as a sheet.

“Rebecca,” Will insists, voice small and anxious- Rebecca One looks from Will to her sister, free hand clenching and unclenching. An eerie calm seems to wash over her, and Will exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, thinking it over. In a way, it is.

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca One says then, and her sister’s face contorts in confusion. 

It happens too quickly. Will registers the lifting of the gun, but his mind breaks on the why of the equation- And Rebecca Two cries out a moment too late, flinging herself at her twin as the girl places the barrel beneath her own chin and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks, and the pair hit the ground in a cloud of dust, Rebecca Two’s panicked gasps the only sound; She flings the gun far from them as she wrests it from her sister’s shaking hands with great struggle, caring little as it slides to Elliott’s feet. 

Rebecca One stops fighting her a moment later. She stares up at her terrified sister blankly before a choked sound escapes her lips, the closest to a sob she has ever made.

In the absence of a gunshot, there is silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't think this is the start of some crazy change of heart for the Rebecca Twins, or I'll have to dash your hopes- Recovering from a lifetime of indoctrination is not that easy, and the decisions made in this chapter reflect on Styx society as a whole, not any remorse from Rebecca One about her own actions.


	12. Part 12: Choice

Elliott doesn’t think. As the gun slides to her feet, her eyes go wide, the silence of shock breaking- She snatches it up and tosses Will her rifle, who almost fumbles and drops it, but that’s none of her concern. The gun’s jam is cleared and the safety is clicked on with a deft brush of her thumb before she tucks it into her belt, and she makes her way to the twins all too fast as Doctor Burrows stumbles up from his knees and staggers across the clearing to watch, slack jawed. 

Rebecca Two is babbling in Styx. Elliott’s shadow is all that alerts her to Elliott’s closeness, the renegade offering her a hand, but the twin seems as shell-shocked as her winded sister. She looks Elliott up and down, eyeing the gun at her belt a split second before she lunges for it, but Elliott is too fast. She twists out of the way and grabs the twin by the base of her ponytail, yanking her off to the side harshly- Rebecca Two hisses as she staggers to where Elliott drags her, breathing heavy as her eyes dart from Elliott to her stunned sister. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” the renegade mutters dryly, looking unimpressed.

Will has the other girl pinned down on the other end of Elliott’s rifle, but he’s being careful to keep his distance as she stares at him rather blankly.

“I bet you think you’re clever,” Rebecca Two rasps through gritted teeth, past the discomfort of Elliott’s grip on her hair before babbling something in Styx again.

“Hey, shut up,” Elliott snaps to quiet her, giving a tug, and then there is silence again. “I can understand you, remember? Besides, that didn’t exactly look planned.”

Rebecca Two glowers up at her.

“Will, rope,” Elliott orders with a snap of her fingers, and Will glances between Elliott and the twin at the end of his rifle, hesitating. Elliott adjusts her grip on the twin’s hair, the girl reaching up to dig her nails into the Renegade’s wrist in an attempt to free herself as she hisses and spits obscenities- but Elliott doesn’t loosen her grip, even as she draws blood with her claws, just grimacing. “She’s not going anywhere. She’s in shock. Rope, quick. It’s in the cave.”

“If you think I’m going to let you hang my sister and I without a fight you’re wrong,” Rebecca Two rasps as she continues to twist helplessly in Elliott’s grasp- The renegade holds her at a safe distance, staring her down coldly. “I’ll kill you, you halfbreed bitch- I’ll claw your eyes out. I’ll rip your throat out with my teeth, I’ll-”

Elliott twists her hair again, and Rebecca Two’s vitriol gasps into a yelp of pain instead- She falls silent, panting and watching Elliott with wild eyes- Like a cornered animal. She’s given up on clawing herself free, crescent moons of red the only trace of her struggle against Elliott’s grip.

“I’m not going to hang you,” Elliott replies calmly, doing her best to mask her disgust. Is that really what they think of her, or is it what they’ve come to expect of their own? Rebecca Two is still heaving for breath, and her eyes dart to her sister rather than Will when he returns with the rope. It strikes Elliott as strange, but she’s grateful for the way the twin seems frozen in her grasp now instead of clawing up her wrist- Will draws close to Rebecca One, and Rebecca Two babbles in Styx again. Elliott doesn’t stop her.

Will looks askance, the words unintelligible to him, but Elliott shakes her head as he ties Rebecca One from wrist to elbow, the shell shocked girl staring blankly at her sister.

As Will ties Rebecca Two’s wrists as well and the twin stops struggling, Elliott thinks she should feel victory. But Rebecca Two’s gaze has not left her sister on the ground; There is something hollow in Elliott’s chest as she grasps the twin by the forearm instead, nudging her towards one of the tents. Rebecca Two doesn’t budge until Will helps her sister to her feet, and follows only after a shove as Elliott loses her patience, something ugly and hot rearing its head to snap where the hollowness had been.

“Let’s go,” the renegade hisses, and Rebecca Two glances over her shoulder with eyes so hysterical that they are almost serene.

“Does it feel good?” Rebecca Two rasps in Styx, grinning.

Elliott doesn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

Throughout the walls of the Citadel, the sound of muted yelling echoes like thunder over the Great Plane. It rumbles, heavy and deep, but nowhere deeper than it does in the chest of the young Division captain bearing its brunt; No older than seventeen to the eye, he does not cry out as he is struck hard enough to draw blood, the crack of the blow echoing through the halls beyond the office like a gunshot. He is grateful, he supposes, that it isn’t one, for he knows that is an option as well- His heart pounds in his chest like a kettledrum as he straightens back up, the warmth of his own ichor rolling down his face from his forehead. He dares not move to wipe the stain away.

“I will not tolerate failure on this scale. I should have you hanged. I should have you all hanged! You would be more use as Stalker food than as soldiers.”

Hanging is crueler than a gunshot. It is messier, he thinks. He does not want to hang. The Old Styx’s beration is background noise as the young soldier stares past him, stares through him- He does not dare look his superior in the eye, not when he is only the messenger, but he keeps his chin high and his stance tight. It is all he can do.

“I would tell you to spare me the trouble and do the job for me,” the Old Styx hisses, his fury seeming to wind down; It does nothing to dispel the dread in the gut of the soldier, even as his superior paces to his desk, turning his back. “But after this… Pathetic display, I am not convinced you would be capable of doing even that right.”

He swallows, daring to wet his lips with his tongue before he speaks, chest tight.

“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

There is silence for a long moment as the hierarch shifts through the paperwork on his desk, seeming to consider before he speaks. “Yes sir,” the Old Styx echoes, voice quieter now. It is not a reprieve; Somehow it is worse as he looks over his shoulder at the young soldier. “I’m sorry, Sir. Is that all you are good for?”

He isn’t sure if he should answer. But as silence hangs, he sucks in a breath sharply, eyes still fixed straight ahead.

“No, sir.”

“No sir,” the Old Styx mutters, before he rounds sharply. The captain doesn’t flinch, though he would like to. The distance between them is closed again, and he expects another blow- But the old man’s gnarled hand closes around the lone decoration of bravery pinned to his breast. “You do not deserve this.”

“No, sir,” he agrees, throat tight, and does not flinch.

The decoration is torn away. He is sent away. And later, when the choice comes, as he knew it would- Between a bullet or rope- He chooses one of his own, and the silence and peace of his own quarters.

Rifle polished, boots shined, and stripped captain’s uniform folded neatly at his feet where they are found, his life is passed on to the next one.

 

* * *

 

Rebecca Two has not given up on testing the strength of the tie that binds the pair of them to the tree behind her. The ropes are too tight, and they give her no leeway, rubbing and burning her wrists as she tries to twist to look at her sister behind her, lashed to the opposite side; If she strains, she can catch no more than a glimpse, but it takes everything she has, and leaves her panting when she relents. She settles back into place with a heave of breath, letting the back of her head rest against the tree as she stares up at the overcast sky- It’s going to rain again.

“Come on,” she rasps in the Styx tongue at last, out of breath, and does her best not to sound desperate. But the shock of their failure is wearing off. She is hungry, she is thirsty, but above all else, she can feel Elliott watching them. The renegade’s eyes feel like a ticking clock; A countdown to what, she does not know. “Come on,” she tries again, twisting in her bonds. “Come on- Talk to me. Please. We can fix this.”

Nothing.

What is going on in her sister’s mind, she wonders? Is she even there, after everything that’s happened? The sound of the pistol jamming echoes in her head, and Rebecca Two flinches, curling her little hands into fists to dispel the sound- She tries again to squirm to face her sister, something else churning in her gut now as she tries to lay eyes on her other half. Making her throat tight.

“How could you?” She gasps at last, anger slipping into her desperate tone. “How could you make me do that? You were going to leave me here.”

There’s no answer.

She gives her sister a moment longer, before something hot and wet makes her eyes burn- She blinks it away with a furious hiss, feeling it roll down her face. “Fine,” she spits. “Coward. I don’t care.”

The sky opens, slowly but surely in the silence, and the raindrops feel like ice on her burning skin. Elliott stirs in the mouth of the cave across the way, her watch disturbed, and the twin’s gaze snaps up to watch. What is she up to now?

“We can’t leave them out there,” Will reasons, chewing his bottom lip as he watches the sky open, and Elliott turns to look at him, only half paying attention as her mind continues to race. Doctor Burrows is asleep- A well earned one, for the first time in his life, and one she doesn’t hold against him, although the sound of his snoring grates against her nerves. It isn’t every day that one is held at gunpoint by the Styx and lives to sleep it off. “They could… Get sick, or-”

“We also can’t let them out of our sight,” Elliott replies, a bit more firmly. She’ll be the first to admit that the sight of the twins tied out in the rain like mistreated dogs is a sorry one- But she thinks about Rebecca Two, about the hand that had grasped for the pistol on her belt instead of the help she had offered, and isn’t so sure. “The one still has a lot of fight in her. She could try something. And if the other one snaps out of… Whatever’s going on there, she’ll be a threat too.”

“I know,” Will replies, a mix of breathy and crestfallen. It has been a surreal, nightmarish few hours, and he has to remember it isn’t over yet. There’s another, bigger question that hangs between the pair of them than whether or not the twins should be brought in from the rain, unspoken, and he has no intention of being the one to pose it. They stand there in silence for a while, watching as it pours- Rebecca Two rolls her shoulders uncomfortably, tapping the back of her head against the tree a few times as she is soaked- And Will watches as she strains again to try to get a look at her sister before giving up.

Elliott is watching him watching.

He keens at her, “...But couldn’t we just-”

“Fine,” she relents, and Will exhales his relief.

“I’ll watch them,” he says gratefully, reaching for the stove gun beside him as he moves to leave the cave, and she pushes up off the wall she’d been leaning on to follow, snatching her rifle up along the way.

Rebecca Two’s heart drops into the ground as she watches the movement, a cold sweat breaking out against her will, and she hisses her sister’s name quietly, fear creeping into her voice. This could be it. “They’re coming. Come on. Come on, just say something, I need you-”

“No funny business. We’re moving you inside.”

Elliott’s words are stern and sharp- Rebecca Two peers up at Will mirthfully from her position on the ground, her demeanor shifting in an instant to something simpering. “What’s wrong Burrows, can’t stand seeing your two little skin and blisters all alone out in the rain?”

“Something like that.” Will grimaces as he unties the rope around the tree, and her eyes widen an infinitesimal amount at the earnest response- Her wrists are still bound, and she knows better than to try anything even as the pressure lessens, watching him intently and narrowing her eyes as the surprise turns into suspicion.

“Sarah must have dropped you on your head one too many times. It’s no wonder you’re so soft,” she huffs, and as he hauls her to her feet, he rolls his eyes, deigning not to respond. He nudges her sharply towards the cave- And she grins back at him over her shoulder. “Ooh, we get to stay with the family? Little ol’ us? This’ll be  _ just _ like old times. Maybe I’ll cook you some breakfast.”

“Shut up before I change my mind.”

Miraculously, she does.

As the pair are marched to the cave, Rebecca Two steals a glance at her sister- Rebecca One is listless, but at least she’s  _ looking  _ at her now. That is a weight off her chest, and Rebecca Two exhales sharply, the unfamiliar feeling of relief washing over her as her sister shows that minor sign of consciousness. The difference between the outside and the cave is immediate and noticeable- A comfortable, dry warmth wraps its arms around her as they enter, and she shivers.

“Here,” Will says, and gestures to the back of the cave- Rebecca Two nods and sits as gracefully as she can manage with her hands behind her back, Elliott guiding her sister into place beside her. The renegade and the colonist step back to look down at them- The Styx girl peers back, one certainly more present than the other.

“...Lovely weather,” Rebecca Two says at last to break the silence, and Elliott huffs irritably, rolling her eyes.

“I can’t do this,” she says to Will, and he opens his mouth to protest, but comes up short- He doesn’t blame her for her frustration. He has no idea what he’s doing. As Elliott stalks away back to the mouth of the cave to decompress, Rebecca Two’s laughter jingles in his ears. 

“It’s okay, loverboy. We don’t need that sad sack anyway- She doesn’t get it, does she? Doesn’t have  _ sisters _ .”

“You’re not my sister,” Will replies sternly, leaning up against the cavern wall. “I already gave you that chance. Back in the Pore- Remember? I believed you.”

“No, you believed  _ me _ . It was pathetic,” Rebecca One sneers, opening her eyes at last- Rebecca Two glances over to her in a glare that’s almost daggers before she catches herself. They’re still on the same side, she must remind herself- Right now that side is the losing one. She’ll take whatever help she can get. “Poor little Will. So eager to believe I was just caught up in all of it… Just like you.”

“It doesn’t matter who I believed,” Will says sharply, shifting and watching the pair. “What matters is I gave you a chance. Everyone told me I was being stupid, but I did it anyway- And then you threw it back in my face. You made me look like an idiot.”

“Our specialty,” Rebecca Two smirks, and Will doesn’t answer, rolling his eyes to quiet the indignant, white hot anger threatening to spill out of his chest. There’s no point, no place for it here- What would he even do with it? He has never wanted to hit someone so badly, but some part of him knows it would bring him nothing but guilt, and the twins, satisfaction. 

Somehow, that’s the worse of the two.

Instead, they sit in silence. Rebecca Two makes no more attempts to needle him, shifting every now and again to scratch an itch against the wall- But otherwise there is nothing. By the time she leans in and begins to mumble softly to her sister in their tongue, Will has nearly fallen asleep standing up- But the sound wakes him with a jolt.

“Hey! Knock it off,” he hisses, straightening up, and Rebecca Two rolls her eyes, grinning at him as she throws a few more words in edgewise with her sister.

“Or?”

“Or I’ll put you back out in the rain. Both of you.”

“Touchy, touchy. What are you even going to do with us after that, hm? Do you even have a plan, or are we just supposed to sit here tied up for the rest of our lives?”

Will grits his teeth.

“We live much longer than you, you know.” That’s Rebecca One now, the mocking tilt in her voice recognizable anywhere. He’s starting to pick up a pattern between the two; Question, needle, question. He doesn’t care for it.

“What we do with you isn’t any of your business until we do it,” he says sharply, and Rebecca Two grins, glancing over at her sister. 

“Ooh, now that sounds interesting. I might just have to stick around to find out if you keep teasing me like that…” She shifts, and the way she speaks makes his eyes dart to where her hands disappear behind her back in panic- The quick look doesn’t go unnoticed, and she laughs, grinning up at him. “Oh, I’m not untied, don’t worry. I’m good, but I’m not that good. Maybe I’ll do that while you’re sleeping?”

Will glances outside bitterly, face heating up with embarrassment despite his best efforts. He wishes the twins weren’t right- Wishes he wasn’t scared of them. There is a distinct lack of white noise, and at first he thinks it might be the result of the blood rushing in his ears- But then he glances outside, and sighs his relief, pushing off the wall.

“Would you look at that,” he says dryly as he hauls Rebecca Two to her feet, and she laughs as she follows his gaze, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “Rain’s stopped. Looks like you can finally get out of my hair.”

“Off your conscience more like,” Rebecca Two grins.

As he shoves her forward, he has no response. He knows he’ll need to think of one soon, for better or worse.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr, [here](http://gaymarasov.tumblr.com/). Comments are appreciated, and if you like the work - Please don't be intimidated to reach out, here or on tumblr. It will absolutely make my day!


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